ESPN Poynter Review Project

Recently we sat down with ESPN interviewing guru John Sawatsky at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., to watch a number of interviews conducted by ESPN reporters and anchors. Here is the Poynter Review Project's brief critique of the three we chose, paired with Sawatsky’s more extensive notes. (We asked the interviewers if they wanted to respond; see below for Adam Schefter's thoughts.) The questions asked by the interviewers are included for reference.

(To review the basics of what Sawatsky teaches about the best ways to phrase questions and structure interviews, go here.)

1. Bubba Watson, interviewed by Tom Rinaldi, April 8.

Background: Watson had just beaten Louis Oosthuizen in a sudden-death playoff at the Masters, the highlight of which was Watson’s amazing hook shot out of the trees onto the 10th green.

Questions:
• What did you see in your head from the trees on the second playoff hole?
• What did you most overcome today?
• What did that hug contain?
• You have emotion on your face as you say that, Bubba. Why?

I thought this was good work. Rinaldi’s first question offered a revealing look into the mind of a golfer who knew both the green and his swing, and had used that knowledge to overcome a seemingly impossible challenge. I was particularly impressed when Rinaldi let an awkward moment drag on, allowing Watson’s emotions to speak for themselves. I objected only to the second question, thinking its superlative felt forced.

Sawatsky preaches that a TV interviewer’s job is to get the subject to let us into his or her mind at the critical moment, giving us an insider’s view of what we saw as outsiders. Rinaldi’s first question was perfect, according to Sawatsky: It got Watson to replay the event, describing the situation from his perspective and how he overcame the obstacle.

Sawatsky wasn’t bothered by the superlative that tripped me up. That’s a focusing element, he said -- it kept Watson from giving a general answer and was useful given how little time Rinaldi had. But Sawatsky had a different objection to that second question: Rinaldi jumped ahead prematurely to the conclusion, instead of keeping Watson in the moment. Sawatsky suggested Rinaldi might have asked, “What was the biggest barrier that you saw?” and then followed that up by asking how Watson overcame it. Sawatsky noted that in his answer, Watson talked about the barriers, but didn’t tell us a lot about overcoming them. That process -- that overcoming -- is where we get our story.

“That’s one of the problems a lot of interviewers have; they get a little impatient and they want to speed things up,” Sawatsky said. "The irony is the more you try to speed things up, the more problems you create.”

Rinaldi then moved to Watson’s hug with his mother.

“That’s a tough question,” Sawatsky said, adding that people who have been through an intense event often can’t really talk about their feelings, because they’re still in the moment. And indeed, he noted, you can see Watson pull back at first in response. But he did answer Rinaldi’s question, and began to grow emotional -- which is where the interview really succeeded.

“The expression on the human face reveals everything,” Sawatsky said. “The New York Times can’t capture that the way TV can.”

After Watson answered, Rinaldi then asked his final question, ending with that simple “Why?” That prompted an uncomfortable pause as Watson choked up in reviewing his travails.

“The beauty of that is it made him relive the moment, and that’s where he got really emotional,” Sawatsky said, praising Rinaldi for letting the silence linger.

When an exchange becomes awkward, our instincts are to jump in and smooth things over. But, Sawatsky says, “journalistically, it’s exactly the opposite" -- an interviewer’s job is to get information, not to have a conversation. By letting the emotional moment go on, even as it took up valuable TV time, Rinaldi got Watson to talk about himself and where he’d come from, leading to the interview’s most indelible moment.

2. Kim Mulkey and Brittney Griner, interviewed by Trey Wingo, Carolyn Peck and Kara Lawson, April 3.

Background: Conducted after Baylor capped an undefeated season by beating Notre Dame for the women’s basketball national championship.

Questions:
• Wingo: What does 40-0 mean to you guys?
• Wingo: What does that mean to you, Brittney?
• Lawson: Coach, what makes this team so special?
• Wingo: It seemed as if in the second half, you just decided, "No matter what they throw at me, I’m going to go to the hole and I’m going to score."
• Peck: What is it that [point guard Odyssey Sims] did for you throughout this tournament to allow you to be national champions?
• Wingo: How were they able to manage the weight of last year’s lost championship and turn it into a title this year?
• Wingo: Makenzie [Robertson], your daughter, came out and wore the braids tonight. Did you know that was coming?

I thought this interview was bland. Griner offered very little, and Mulkey’s most interesting comments came late, when she talked about changing Sims’ habits and not being able to protect her players from how good they were.

Sawatsky heard questions that were a bit off the mark, but thought the bigger problem was that multiple people were interviewing two people at once -- an issue compounded by the fact that one was a coach and the other a player.

Sawatsky noted that Wingo’s first question focused on the undefeated season, not the title. But Mulkey was more focused on the title -- and so the coach spent most of her first answer knocking down the presumption of his question.

Wingo then asked Griner the same question, and the star player simply offered a blander version of her coach’s answer. To Sawatsky, that’s another symptom of the interview’s structure.

“The coach influences the player,” he said, adding that “if the coach hadn’t been there, you would almost certainly have gotten a completely different answer.”

Lawson’s question was derailed because she appended her own opinion, one of Sawatsky’s deadly sins. But he also noted that where Wingo focused on the game, Lawson asked about the season, changing the focus.

“Different interviewers generally have different goals and will step on each other,” he said, “even when trying to work together.”

Wingo then asked Griner a question that wasn’t actually a question, but Sawatsky’s larger objection was that “the interviewer is picking his moment and deciding to make it about that -- he wasn’t in the game.” Presented with Wingo’s view of the game, Griner wasn’t free to address what she saw as the turning point.

Next came Peck, who asked about the tournament -- changing the focus yet again. Sawatsky said the question was well-constructed, but thought focusing on the tournament instead of the game was a misstep. Few journalists, he noted, had the chance to immediately interview Baylor’s coach and star about the just-concluded title game, while the experience was still fresh. Given that opportunity, he argued, it’s best to focus on the game.

3. Roger Goodell, interviewed by Adam Schefter, March 21

Background: Schefter was trying to get the NFL commissioner to address questions about the severity of the penalties handed down to the New Orleans Saints for their bounty program targeting opposing players.

Questions:
• Why did you see the need to hand down the most severe penalties in NFL history?
• How much of a factor in his ultimate punishment was [New Orleans coach Sean Payton’s] lying? And was the cover-up worse than the crime?
• When you gave the message to Saints owner Tom Benson, what was his response to you?
• What was the one piece of evidence that made you say, “I have to take the action that I’m about to take?”
• What made the Saints’ case different from what’s gone on around the league and what other people say is routine?
• Why not announce the punishment for the players along with the punishment for the rest of the Saints organization?
• So do you have any idea when we might hear from you on the players?
• What do you say to the fans of New Orleans about this?
• Roger, what do you say to the people who say your penalties here in this case are too harsh? Have you thought about the fact that you’re literally taking $7.5 million away from the table from Sean Payton? How confident are you that we will never [again] see anything like what you have said the Saints are guilty of doing?

I thought this was a solid interview. For me, a minor discordant note was that Schefter’s intensity and rapid-fire questions -- some of them a bit loaded -- made the interview come across as almost prosecutorial.

Sawatsky focused on something that hadn’t registered with me. On a micro level, he said, Schefter’s questions were good, but the sequence of seemingly disparate questions prevented the interview from being more comprehensive.

Sawatsky notes that Schefter had six and a half minutes with Goodell, a long TV interview.

“If you have that kind of time, you’re better off asking questions in their natural sequence,” he said.

For instance, Schefter begins with a “why” question, which Sawatsky said is a good inquiry, but not the ideal tactic for starting an interview.

“You’re asking for an explanation, and you can’t give an explanation without something to explain,” he said.

Goodell might have revealed more, Sawatsky said, if the reporter had led him through the investigation as it unfolded: What did you expect? What did you encounter? So how did you react to that?

In Sawatsky’s view, Schefter’s well-honed instincts to break news limited the yield in the interview.

Schefter, Sawatsky said, “asked fundamentally good questions for the most part, but limited his quest to the domain of hard information when he had an opportunity to go deeper. In fairness to Adam, he wanted to cover as much territory as possible, but I don’t think he understood the trade-off.”

Sawatsky divides information into “hard” and “soft.” Facts are hard information, while soft information captures people’s thoughts, reactions, emotions, values, intentions, inclinations, level of commitment and degree of determination. Hard information tends to be stated, while soft information is most effective when it’s shown.

To maximize the value of an interview, Sawatsky says, you need both, but soft information “conveys a lot more meaning.” Interviews heavy on hard information can lack richness and depth, which is fine if the goal is to break news, but a missed opportunity if the goal is to explain. Many of the most memorable interviews fall into that category; rather than breaking news, they give us a deeper understanding of people involved in that news.

Soft information, Sawatsky says, can reveal “more than the actual act and give a truer picture of the real state of affairs. Is Roger Goodell personally ticked off, or merely acting in a prudent manner in his capacity as the NFL’s CEO, or is it something in between? That’s a revealing insight that does not emerge from hard information.”

In an email response to this critique, Schefter called Sawatsky's points "spot on," but notes that the opportunity for the interview came on an already frantic day -- mere minutes separated word of the Saints' penalties and the news that Tim Tebow had been traded to the Jets. Schefter was told he could have five minutes with Goodell and rushed to New York City.

Amid such harried circumstances, Schefter said, "if I had gotten Goodell to go into the background explanations and soft information, I don't know that I would have had time to get him to respond to the significant news questions after what were historic suspensions on one of the biggest offseason NFL stories in a long time. ... I would have loved to have had time to try Sawatsky's approach, and I intend to do that in a future interview, when time is not an obstacle."

Next time you watch an ESPN interview, listen to the questions asked and the order in which they’re asked.

Are they “closed” yes/no questions, or “open” ones that encourage the subject to explore something? Has the interviewer weighed down the question with his or her own values? Is the question so convoluted that it confuses the subject, or offers an escape route? Does the order of the questions make the subject reveal more, or less?

As our critique demonstrates, if you watch interviews with Sawatsky’s lessons in mind, you’ll see how he’s helped ESPN with the art of interview -- and you’ll detect some shortcomings he’s still working to address.

For eight years, John Sawatsky has made ESPN his laboratory for deciphering the science of interviewing. A former investigative reporter, he has worked with the network's reporters, producers, anchors and other talent to put his philosophy into practice and make it part of ESPN's culture.

"There are no rules in the interview," he said during a recent visit to his office at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn. "But there is a set of principles, and they are universal and they are timeless. If you follow them, you get good results. If you violate them, you pay a price."

Sports is a natural arena for interviews: The best athletes are simultaneously amazing physical specimens and canny strategists, a fascinating combination even without our apparently limitless appetite for sports news and information. Yet athletes can be tough interview subjects, often well-schooled in keeping the media at bay with carefully rehearsed blandness.

A good interviewer must penetrate the fog of sports clichés, getting athletes and coaches to reflect on what they do and how they do it, and be able to hold his or her ground when a story demands more than sports knowledge.

ESPN has long prided itself for its reporting and game coverage. Its history is filled with memorable interview moments, for better (Jeremy Schaap and Bobby Fischer, Brian Kenny and Floyd Mayweather Jr.) and sometimes for worse (Jim Rome and Jim Everett, or Schaap having to fend off an angry Bob Knight). Any week of ESPN programming will include extended interviews as well as hasty exchanges with players rushing on or off the field.

Sawatsky's job is to ensure ESPN's reporters, producers, editors and talent get the most out of interviews, whether extended sit-downs or hurried stand-ups. Sawatsky has several core principles for effective interviewing, a methodology he divides into "micro" techniques, aimed at asking better questions, and "macro" techniques, aimed at getting better stories.

On the micro level, Sawatsky preaches that questions should be open, neutral and lean. Open questions typically ask what, how or why, and yield more than closed questions, which invite yes or no answers. Neutral questions are free of values added by the reporter; Sawatsky sees such values, whether positive or negative, as distracting baggage. And questions should be lean: brief in length, and conceptually simple. (For more about Sawatsky and his techniques, see profiles here and here.)

Combine closed questions and the baggage of values and you get questions that may sound tough, but are easily evaded, returning no information for readers or viewers. (The late Mike Wallace was a favorite target of Sawatsky's on this front.) And even friendly interviews can fail, Sawatsky warns, because reporters treat them as common discourse instead of hunts for information.

"The interview is not a conversation," Sawatsky says, adding that the goal "is to get, not to give. What's the goal of conversation? It's to exchange -- it's as much about giving as it is about getting. I tell people, 'When you're giving, you should be giving to our audience.' "

Sawatsky won renown as one of Canada's best investigative reporters, which led to teaching journalism at Carleton University. In the late 1980s, he enlisted students to help research a biography of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, using standardized questions he had developed. The results opened Sawatsky's eyes: Some questions worked and some didn't, regardless of who was asking them.

The experience taught Sawatsky to see interviewing as a science, one with principles that could be discovered through experimentation and with techniques that could be taught. He soon developed a new career, becoming the interview coach at CBC and conducting workshops across the world in which he would teach his methodology. (The Poynter Institute has been an occasional host for such workshops.)

But Sawatsky was frustrated: He wanted "to change the culture of the journalism interview," but couldn't do that parachuting into organizations for brief visits. That led him to ESPN, which hired him full-time in 2004. With ESPN, Sawatsky thought, he would have senior management on his side. And by sticking around, he would able to reinforce his lessons over time.

At ESPN, Sawatsky found challenges and opportunities, especially when teaching his methods to numerous former athletes now acting as analysts. Most, he found, thought like athletes, not journalists. As interviewers, Sawatsky says, ex-jocks are inclined "to go soft and not to challenge things, particularly if they're very recent athletes. They still have friends in the game." Moreover, he says, "they think about promoting the sport. I have to keep telling them, 'What's the mission statement of ESPN? To serve sports fans.' "

At the same time, there are upsides to teaching former players -- knowledge of their sports, the confidence natural to gifted athletes, and the fact that they are more coachable. "These guys have been coached all their lives," Sawatsky said. "If they weren't coachable, they wouldn't have gotten to where they are athletically."

Sawatsky still remembers seeing raw footage of former Dallas Cowboys wideout and ESPN analyst Michael Irvin conducting an interview. Before asking each question, Irvin would talk to himself, repeating "open, neutral, lean."

"Michael did some really good interviews," Sawatsky says, sounding both amused and appreciative.

Sawatsky taught his principles to all of ESPN's anchors, producers and talent, and now holds workshops periodically, addressing new hires and those who want or need to improve their interviewing skills. A key teaching tool is reviewing tapes of interviews. Sawatsky asks the interviewer to tell him the goal of the interview, after which they go through the tape. Sawatsky writes down the questions, allowing the interviewer to assess their effectiveness.

"I let the results do the talking," Sawatsky says. Asked how the culture of interviewing has changed at ESPN, Sawatsky says that while there's still work to be done, "the mantra has changed" in terms of how to ask questions -- the "micro" part of his teachings.

"People are really conscious on the micro -- they don't always follow it, but they're aware of it, and it's become a guiding mantra for them," he says. " 'Open, neutral, lean' -- all the reporters in the company know that, and most of them I think sincerely try to follow it. "

The easiest place to see his teachings in action, Sawatsky says, is during sideline interviews. He's written a manual for ESPN that offers techniques for such encounters. He advises ESPN's sideline reporters to stick to a single topic, narrow that focus to a single aspect of the game at hand, and make the question about something extremely tangible. (Sawatsky praises Holly Rowe as a particularly good sideline reporter.)

Sawatsky says he hasn't been as successful at teaching "macro" lessons -- how to structure interviews as more than just a series of individual questions.

To address that, he has begun teaching a new workshop at ESPN, one he calls "story magic." In it, he examines what structural elements make stories work, using commercials as a teaching tool. Commercials, he says, can tell wonderful stories while having to ruthlessly economize on time. Why, for instance, was Mean Joe Greene's Coke ad magical, while Joe Namath's famous pantyhose ad wasn't?

Whether the principles are micro or macro, Sawatsky's laboratory is still conducting experiments.

"The methodology isn't finished, and it will never be finished," Sawatsky says. "The basic principles -- the micro and macro principles -- are pretty much in place. But I'm looking for new ways to illustrate them. And of course I'm still learning about stuff, too."

The Poynter Review Project will critique some ESPN interviews along with Sawatsky, and will write about them in upcoming posts.

How does ESPN assess advertisements for its networks? And why does it sometimes reject them? The answers sometimes depend not just on the ads themselves, but on where those ads send viewers and what they find there.

That issue came up late last month in connection with an ad from the Rise Up and Register Campaign, a voter-registration effort aimed at NASCAR fans. In the ad, second-year racer Blake Koch (pronounced Cook) notes that more than half of racing fans didn’t vote in the last election, and admits he was one of them.

"It’s time for all of us -- the entire NASCAR nation -– to rise up and make our voices heard in this election," he says.

ESPN rejected Rise Up and Register’s ad, deciding it violated its policy (communicated to ad agencies) of not taking ads that include political or issue-oriented advocacy or ads from religious institutions. Last month, Koch -– who often shares his testimony at churches -- appeared on "Fox and Friends" to discuss the decision and whether he was being targeted for his religious beliefs.

"I didn’t think that my faith in Christ would have an impact on whether or not a sponsor could air a commercial or not," he told Fox.

Ed Durso, ESPN’s executive vice president for administration, told the Poynter Review Project that the network’s issue wasn’t with the ad itself, but with the Web sites associated with it. Those sites "had messages that are clearly, in my opinion, in the area of advocacy," Durso said, adding that "we decided based on those criteria that we wouldn’t accept it."

ESPN guidelines don’t outlaw related Web sites, and Durso said the network evaluates every proposal "on its own merits." But he adds that ESPN has maintained "a consistent policy that links to advocacy sites violate our guidelines."

As of this writing, Rise Up and Register’s site, which says its mission is to register more than a million new voters this year, includes links to Koch’s site, to a form used by people who’d like Koch to speak at churches, and to Be My Vote, a site aimed at registering pro-life voters as part of efforts to stop abortion.

Durso said every ad submitted to ESPN is reviewed against the network’s guidelines. If questions arise, they’re discussed with the ad-sales representatives responsible for that client, as well as others at ESPN who might have an interest. For example, Durso says, questions about an NBA ad might lead to consultations with ESPN’s programming arm.

If there’s sufficient uncertainty about an ad, it lands on Durso’s desk -– which is what happened with the Rise Up and Register spot. Durso said he consulted with ad sales and ESPN’s corporate outreach department, reviewed the ad and Rise Up’s site and decided "in relatively short order" that it didn’t meet ESPN’s standards.

"It didn’t appear to me that voter registration was the primary objective of the websites and what they’re all about," Durso said.

Rise Up and Register’s case "is not as unique as you might think," Durso said, adding that the spot arrived not long after ESPN turned down an environmental-advocacy ad, again because of an associated site.

"We turn down a lot of those," Durso said, adding that "people aren’t turning to ESPN for political debate. There are plenty of other places to get that if they want it."

Durso said many of the ad agencies ESPN with which works are aware of its guidelines, but noted that with new ad campaigns constantly emerging, advertisers, agencies and account managers often change. Moreover, he said, "cause-related efforts are a growing component [of advertising], so it is not surprising that more of these types of issues are emerging."

As for Koch’s religious beliefs, Durso said they weren’t relevant to ESPN’s decision.

"We’re not trying to make judgments about anything or anyone," he said. "In fact, we try to avoid that."

The fate of Rise Up’s ad raises an interesting point for ESPN and other networks in the digital age: How much weight should be given to material associated with an ad campaign, and how direct must that association be to violate standards? Durso said there’s "no precise answer" to such questions; he and others at ESPN look at what’s presented and make a judgment based on that review.

We agree that it’s not an easy question to answer. By its very nature, the Web can take you from one place to somewhere very different in dizzyingly short order. And some goals are worthy regardless of the political bent of those encouraging them -– a category in which we’d certainly include increased voter registration and engagement.

But that is what makes the Rise Up and Register campaign so interesting. The Koch spot is a straightforward voter-registration message aimed at a fan base whose political bent is by no means uniform, and Rise Up and Register’s site seems relatively neutral politically. But that’s not true of BeMyVote; its goal is clearly political advocacy.

Our point of view is that material on sites associated with an ad shouldn’t be subjected to an all-or-nothing standard, but assessed the same way a new visitor might see them. What conclusion would that visitor draw from the material presented, the links featured, and their prominence?

We don’t think links helping people arrange a church visit by Koch amount to a violation of ESPN’s prohibition on messages from religious institutions, but BeMyVote is clearly an advocacy site, and one given a prominent position on Rise Up and Register’s site. One can agree or disagree with ESPN’s standards prohibiting advocacy messages, but we think its decision to reject Right to Register’s ad was a proper interpretation of those standards.

Durso said sponsors frequently come back to ESPN to discuss what has to be changed to win approval. Rise Up and Register hasn’t contacted ESPN since the network’s decision, he said, but added that if the group’s ad agency wanted to discuss the campaign, ESPN would share its concerns.

"We’re open to working with people," Durso said, adding that "we’re not a closed shop."

Legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight has long done things his way, and his five years as an ESPN analyst have been no different. Knight prefers to call himself a basketball consultant rather than a member of the media, and wears sweaters like those from his coaching days, rather than the standard analyst wardrobe of coat and tie.

But Knight went too far recently in covering the early rounds of the NCAA men’s tournament. Asked about teams vulnerable to upsets, Knight went out of his way to avoid saying “Kentucky,” referring to the No. 1 seed in the South Region as only “that team from the SEC.”

That wasn’t new behavior: In February, Knight was asked on the “Mike & Mike in the Morning” radio show about the country’s top teams, and left Kentucky out of the discussion -- despite the Wildcats being ranked No. 1 in both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls. Nor, in a discussion of the country’s best players, did he mention Kentucky’s Anthony Davis. (ESPN PR says such accounts have been overstated, since Knight's focus in the segment was on Syracuse. Listen here.)

What’s going on here? It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to figure it out. Back in 2009, Knight said he couldn’t understand why Kentucky’s John Calipari was still coaching since he’d “put two schools on probation in Massachusetts and Memphis,” a reference to Final Four appearances vacated by the NCAA for infractions that happened on Calipari’s watch. (In neither case was Calipari implicated.) Then, last spring, in criticizing the policy allowing players to go to the NBA after a single season, Knight said that Kentucky had “started five players in the NCAA tournament games that had not been to class that semester.” That wasn’t true, and Knight soon apologized.

Given this history of bad blood, readers and critics pounced on Knight’s circumlocutions, and rightly so.

“His failure to refer to the college basketball teams of Kentucky and Indiana by name is, quite frankly, childish and immature behavior that is reprehensible,” one reader wrote to the Poynter Review Project. Opined another: “That is pathetic, and it is just as pathetic that ESPN brass allow this farce to continue.” A third wrote that “I would like to know if ESPN still feels the positives of his employment continue to outweigh the potential damage to the college basketball arm of the ESPN brand.”

Some at ESPN had their say, too.

Take this instantly popular tweet from ESPN columnist Rick Reilly: “What happens to Bob Knight if he says the word ‘Kentucky’? Does his lower jaw fall off? Snakes spring from his hair? My God, does he smile?”

With a media furor in full swing, something interesting happened: Last Wednesday, Knight appeared on the “Mike & Mike” show, discussed Friday’s upcoming Kentucky and Indiana rematch, and mentioned both teams by name multiple times. (Kentucky would win, 102-90.)

What changed? In answer to our inquiries last week, Mark Gross, ESPN senior vice president and executive producer, e-mailed us this comment: “Our production staff has had conversations with Coach Knight on the topic. On this past Wednesday’s appearance on ESPN’s 'Mike & Mike,’ he talked extensively about Kentucky, a week after he specifically discussed Kentucky on his March 14 'Mike & Mike' appearance. Our focus now is on our upcoming coverage of the NCAA tournament and Final Four.”

Knight, indeed, did talk about Kentucky on the March 14 show, mentioning the school by name once in discussing how the Wildcats’ loss in the SEC title game might affect their tournament play. But his comments about Kentucky were remarkable mostly for how generic they were -- contrast that limp analysis with his discussion of Syracuse and Fab Melo earlier in the segment.

Knight is far from the first coach to treat longtime rivals as if they don’t exist or aren’t fit to be named, and his well-known irascibility is part of his charm. (At least to some.) The problem is that Knight isn’t appearing on ESPN as a coach, but as an analyst. For a coach to be petulant and flaunt grudges is part of the theater of sports; for an analyst to do so is unprofessional behavior.

On the one hand, the Poynter Review Project is reluctant to make a federal case out of this. We doubt it is news to any college hoops fan that Knight isn’t a fan of Calipari’s, and ESPN brought Knight on not just for his basketball acumen but also for his larger-than-life personality. Nor do we think it’s a disaster for ESPN to let Knight march to the beat of his own drummer at times (who cares if the man wears sweaters on the air?).

But while 902 wins, 11 Big Ten Conference titles, three NCAA championships and an Olympic gold medal might let you keep your top button undone, it doesn’t allow you to be derelict in your duties as an analyst. And this gets to a question that has bedeviled ESPN before: Do its star analysts get to play by different rules than the rest of ESPN’s talent?

ESPN has taken steps to address that perception, but too often they’ve been half-measures. Take last year’s two-tiered system for endorsement deals, discussed by Poynter here. Non-analysts are limited in which endorsement deals they can sign, with an eye on preventing apparent conflicts of interests; analysts (and some reporters) can strike such deals, checked only by ESPN’s public disclosure of the deals it deems relevant.

ESPN sees that system as a necessary compromise given the reality of the sports world’s big salaries and big egos, and we have a fair amount of sympathy for their dilemma. But it means ESPN has to be very careful about policing that system -- and making clear what is and is not acceptable.

That's particularly true given the overlap in roles between ESPN's star analysts and its journalists. Analysts don't necessarily have to be rigorously objective -- as ESPN's journalists do -- but they do have to be fair, and professional in how they treat their subjects. Sports bona fides don't preclude ESPN's celebrity analysts from doing excellent work for viewers and readers; many of them do. But if that work is unfair or unprofessional, it besmirches the work of ESPN journalists who have to live by different rules.

In Knight’s case, ESPN moved relatively quickly to intercede and, one hopes, to prevent further damage. But it shouldn’t have had to do so in the first place. When you become an analyst, you’re no longer a coach. Your accumulated wisdom and body of work comes with you, to inform that analysis. Biases and bad blood, on the other hand, have to be left behind.

ESPN.com‘s Jemele Hill did a very nice, tight column this week explaining how the lives of professional athletes are connected to the life and death of Trayvon Martin.

Contrast that to ESPN’s bouncing back and forth on whether its talent can post a photo of a “hoodie” via social media in solidarity with the family of the Florida teenager who was shot and killed Feb. 26 by a neighborhood watch captain. That incident occurred as Martin was walking back to his father’s house in Sanford, Fla., to watch the tipoff of the NBA All-Star Game after a run to a convenience store for ice tea and candy.

As a journalism organization, ESPN should do more work like Hill’s and less like the self-expression of several others -- including ESPN anchors Trey Wingo and Mike Hill, NFL reporter Michael Smith and Grantland writer Jonathan Abrams -- who donned hoodies in their Twitter avatars.

If you want to make a difference, explain the story, don’t become part of it.

This is a basic tenet of journalism that is becoming lost in this day of social media – also known as slacktivism. It feels good to join a popular movement by slapping a bumper sticker on your car or wearing your heart on your sleeve. But with a little work, and a little self-restraint, journalists can do so much more.

Using LeBron James’ and other athletes’ show of solidarity as a jumping-off point, Hill explains why Trayvon’s story matters to the sporting world. She offers a litany of examples that document how professional athletes, some of the richest, most powerful people in our society, are often victims of racial profiling.

She practiced journalism. And it’s so much more effective than pulling up the hood on your sweatshirt and taking a picture.

Rob King, senior vice president of editorial for ESPN digital and print media, was involved in the decision over the weekend to allow an exception to the company’s social media policy and allow employees to post the hoodie image on social networks. There was a robust conversation about the topic among ESPN executives before a decision was made, King told us.

"We asked, 'What are they expressing?' " King said. "Visually, they are expressing their notions of tolerance around the case. We feel this is a unique expression."

In the abstract, that is certainly true. But in the specific instance of this case, the hoodie is a visual expression of support for the parents of Trayvon and their petition for law enforcement to bring charges against the man who killed their son. King said he believes that most of the ESPN folks using the hoodie image were expressing broader support for the value of tolerance.

Even if that's the case, there's no way for the audience to know which sentiment was being expressed by the hoodie, or the intent behind it. And we don't know how the facts in this specific story will continue to change. Hill's story, meanwhile, will remain salient.

Journalists and other ESPN employees sit on a perch of influence. So they have an enormous reach. They should take that role seriously. When you become part of the story, you lose your ability to tell an independent story. Although it seems sympathetic, and even morally superior, to offer up a political commentary, leave that to the athletes – many, including members of the Miami Heat, showed support for Martin -- and, instead, find a way to help the audience better understand the story. (ESPN NBA columnist Michael Wallace wrote about the Heat sending a message of support for Martin last weekend).

ESPN’s policy that prohibits its commentators, anchors, reporters and analysts from making personal political statements is a good one because it preserves the individual's ability to do powerful work that others cannot do. Although we applaud the willingness to wrestle with the social media policy -- it should be a living, breathing document -- we were disheartened to see ESPN make an exception to the strongly rooted journalism value of independence.

And it’s not because we want to silence ESPN staffers. Instead, we'd like to see them cover the story, as it relates to sports. Hill found a way to do it. Certainly others can, as well.

Earlier this month, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made an anti-gay joke at the expense of Grantland’s Bill Simmons while the two were onstage in front of a large audience at a well-known sports conference -- a remark excised from a podcast recorded during the event.

The Poynter Review Project was curious about why Grantland edited out Cuban’s remark. After looking into it, we’re persuaded that Grantland wasn’t trying to protect an NBA owner by making a sophomoric joke disappear. Nor do we think the edit violated ESPN’s standards. Cuban’s remark -- for which he apologized -- was unfortunate, and left ESPN facing criticism no matter what it did.

Cuban was on stage to close out the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, a high-profile event that attracts members of sports front offices and bright students wishing to join their ranks. (ESPN is one of the conference’s sponsors.) He and Simmons spent an hour talking about all things NBA, from advanced stats and the league’s recent labor troubles to how teams are run and how they're marketed to fans.

Simmons has interviewed Cuban before at the Sloan conference, and the event always draws a packed house, eager to see two big personalities whose tongues can be gleefully barbed.

“I’ve known Mark for five or six years and this is either the third or fourth year we've done something at Sloan together,” Simmons wrote via e-mail. “He loves busting balls and I obviously do as well. We like each other. Those panels are pretty tame so we're always trying to liven them up -- otherwise people are going to zone out and start looking at their texts or Twitter.”

Things took an unfortunate turn, however, when Simmons said he liked the Kiss Cam in arenas. Cuban responded by saying that Simmons and his “boyfriend” are frequently featured on the big screen. He then hastily added, “Or his girlfriend, this is gender-independent commentary.” Simmons ignored that, pushing ahead to another question about the Mavericks’ arena.

“I can't defend the remark -- it just felt like it came out of 1987 or something,” Simmons said. “He was trying to be funny and bust my chops and ended up saying something dumb -- we both knew immediately that he screwed up. He tried to backtrack and I tried to move things into a different direction, because what else was I going to do? He was definitely more subdued for the next few minutes; I actually had trouble keeping the interview entertaining because he became a little gun-shy after that.”

Simmons said that, after the interview, he and David Jacoby, a Grantland writer/editor who was producing the B.S. Report podcast, discussed what Cuban had said.

“There was never a question it was coming out,” Simmons said. “It took us about 0.02 seconds to decide.”

Asked why, Simmons said, “From our standpoint, had we left that joke in the podcast, we would have been condoning it. … We certainly weren't trying to hide the joke or protect Cuban -- there were 2,000 people there, including a few of my bosses, and 50 to 75 bloggers and writers.”

Bleeped profanity aside, Simmons said that was the only edit to the Cuban podcast he recalled. But he added that such edits aren’t unknown with the B.S. Report, and that the decisions about what to cut are his.

“We have whomever is producing the podcast write down any possible notes for either (A) a joke or remark that may have crossed the line, or (B) a section of the pod that's just boring or redundant that we can cut out to make it flow better,” Simmons said. “At the same time, I'm making mental notes for possible edits. We don't give guests the option of asking after the fact to remove a quote or comment -- we make those determinations ourselves.”

Such edits, he said, happen “very rarely and it's almost always to remove a joke that's a little too sophomoric. We've even joked about it a couple of times with our repeat guests -- especially with Cousin Sal [Iacono], who loves pushing the envelope.”

Every ESPN podcast that isn’t live is checked for content before it’s made available for streaming or downloading. Readers of the oral history book “Those Guys Have All the Fun” may remember Simmons’ complaints about remarks being cut from his podcasts. Since then, a disclaimer has been added to the B. S. Report noting that it “occasionally touches on mature subjects,” an addition meant to give Simmons more free rein, and responsibility for the podcasts has passed to the growing team at Grantland.

We think Simmons did a good job moving things along at Sloan. Confronting Cuban about a foolish misstep might have sparked headlines, but it would have marked the end of a more-interesting discussion about sports business, which was what the audience was there for. (And while it’s not directly our concern, Cuban’s subsequent apology struck us as sincere and forthright.)

Questions about why Grantland edited the remark are reasonable (see here and here), but ESPN would also have been pilloried if it had left Cuban’s remark in.

Simmons and Jacoby made the kind of decision they’d made before as producers. The difference was that this time the exchange happened before an audience, which knew a guest had gone over the line. That was unfortunate, but we don’t see it as a clear-cut reason to handle the situation differently.

The rise of Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks’ Asian-American star, has been one of 2012’s feel-good sports stories. But it’s come with an unwelcome undercurrent: racial references by fans, columnists and TV personalities that have ranged from innocent-but-cringe-worthy to openly offensive.

Last week, ESPN went from the sidelines of this spectacle to center stage, issuing three apologies within 24 hours for “offensive and inappropriate comments” that led to one employee’s dismissal and another’s suspension for 30 days.

The first incident to garner widespread attention involved a headline on ESPN’s mobile website early Saturday morning. As ESPN dealt with the fallout from that mistake, its attention was drawn to another incident, on ESPNEWS on Wednesday night, then to a third on ESPN Radio on Friday night. All three involved the phrase “chink in the armor,” which has no racial connotations in itself but was an unfortunate choice -- to say the least -- when used in discussing Lin’s on-court performance.

After looking into the incidents, The Poynter Review Project sees one as a lapse in judgment by an editor working without a net and the other two as terribly timed slips of the tongue. One of the punishments imposed strikes us as too severe. And we note that the phrase that got ESPN in so much trouble is awfully shopworn and lazy. Whether they can be misinterpreted or not, clichés are signs of a writer or speaker on cruise control – which increases the chance of a crash.

Let’s look at the headline first. According to ESPN, it appeared on the mobile website around 2:30 a.m. Saturday and was taken down about 35 minutes later. The headline linked to a story by Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com about whether the Knicks’ loss to the New Orleans Hornets had exposed weaknesses in Lin’s game.

Anthony Mormile, vice president for mobile content at ESPN, said the Bristol-based editorial team for the mobile sites consists of eight people who usually work two per shift. After 2 a.m., one editor is often catching up on the “back end,” updating content for sports that aren’t in season and taking care of other editorial loose ends. The other editor is generally handling the “front end” of the site, loading up “experience carousels” with headlines, summaries and links to articles. (Because cellphones offer less screen real estate than desktop computers, the mobile editors often write different headlines.)

Mormile said that, on Saturday night, the front-end editor -- 28-year-old Anthony Federico, who had six years of experience on the mobile team -- liked Begley’s column and decided to spotlight it for the mobile site, sensing that the conversation had shifted from the Knicks’ loss to potential holes in Lin’s game. As Mormile noted, Federico “created more work for himself” in doing so, and, by deciding to feature the Lin story on the mobile home page, “in theory, he did absolutely 100 percent the right thing.”

Unfortunately, his choice of headlines unraveled all that. Said Mormile, “Anthony had no concept, no awareness that could be construed as a potentially explosive headline.”

Rob King, senior vice president for editorial, print and digital, said that, as things now stand, the Web and mobile sides of ESPN’s house are technologically different and generally work in parallel, not together. On the Web side, King said, lead content packages and headlines go through a copy desk before they’re pushed live, and a copy editor is always there when a home page editor is working. But the mobile team doesn’t have “that level of oversight … you had one person making a move that a lot of people could see.”

Mormile says the mobile editors generally double-check each other’s work, providing at least an informal safety net. But the other editor on Federico’s shift was busy supporting ESPN’s Bracket Bound app, which is getting a lot of usage in the run-up to March Madness. Federico pushed the headline out himself -- and, when Mormile was alerted a little after 3 a.m., Twitter “was blowing up with people putting up screen shots and condemnations.”

The next morning, ESPN issued a prepared statement saying that “we are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.” Linking to that statement via Twitter, King wrote that “there’s no defense for the indefensible. All we can offer are our apologies, sincere though incalculably inadequate.”

By then, though, ESPN was dealing with another unfortunate use of the phrase: ESPNEWS anchor Max Bretos had used it Wednesday night while interviewing Knicks analyst Walt Frazier. That brought another apology, one also made on the air Saturday. The third use of the phrase in connection with Lin came to light after that: On Friday night, Knicks play-by-play announcer Spero Dedes had said it on ESPN Radio New York.

On Sunday, Federico was dismissed and Bretos suspended for 30 days. (Dedes is employed by MSG Network, which produces the Knicks' radio broadcasts.) John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president of production, said that the two decisions were reached after “a number of conversations” and that, although “the subject matter was the same, we looked at each incident on its own.”

Mormile said Federico “was devastated, but understood” the company’s decision. On Twitter, Bretos apologized, said his comment was “not done with any racial reference,” acknowledged that the phrase had been inappropriate in that context and pledged to “make every effort to avoid something similar happening again.” Asked about Dedes, an MSG spokesman said Monday that “we are evaluating and will have no additional comment at this time.”

One potential factor in the severity of the punishments: Earlier in the week, racial sensitivity regarding the Lin storyline was a topic in the company’s monthly editorial board meeting, and ESPN issued a memo to all its content groups urging staffers to be cognizant of how Lin was discussed -- a directive that was revisited in a Friday staff meeting.

Anyone who had followed other media outlets’ Lin coverage understood the need for caution: MSG had shown a fan-made graphic of Lin emerging from a fortune cookie; the New York Post celebrated a Lin buzzer-beater with the back-page headline “AMASIAN!”; and Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock had apologized for a sophomoric, racially tinged tweet about Lin. Not long after discussing the need to avoid such missteps, however, ESPN had a flurry of its own to deal with.

Mormile praised Federico as “a good, good kid,” and called the mistake “a momentary lapse of judgment that ended up being an egregious error.” Many journalists have been saved by the sharp eyes of others and some luck; sadly, Federico had neither on his side. But, even at mobile speed, a headline writer has time to deliberate, and learning how to step back and assess one’s work is a critical skill. (We reached out to Federico, who didn't want to comment at this time.)

The 30-day suspension of Bretos -- who has been with ESPN for two years -- strikes us as too harsh, though. Looking at the clip of Bretos’ comments, we see no sign he was trying to be snarky or clever, and an on-air reporter must think, listen and talk in real time, with no chance to review his or her words. Flubs and slips of the tongue are a hazard of the trade, and an unfortunate choice of words at the wrong time can be devastating. Reconsidering Bretos’ sentence would neither undermine ESPN's speedy and forthright response to these incidents nor damage its efforts to make sure such a thing doesn’t happen again.

One step we would suggest is for ESPN to demand that its writers and on-air talent find richer language and fresher turns of phrase. We’d be happy never to read or hear “chink in the armor” again on ESPN. That has nothing to do with political correctness or the possibility of an innocent phrase being misconstrued. Rather, it’s that the descriptive power of that phrase was leached away by overuse decades ago, and it’s now just clichéd noise -- and a sign of someone on cruise control. (Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless discussed the issue of racial sensitivity and ESPN's missteps on “First Take” on Monday morning.)

Technological help also might be on the way. King said that ESPN is “right in the middle of building a better process” that allows editors to publish to all platforms, which would align the mobile team’s efforts better with those of its Web counterparts and give its employees more of a safety net.

Technological fixes aren’t everything, of course: In its prepared statement, ESPN promised other measures, including self-examination and response to constructive criticism.

“It’s a teaching moment and a learning moment for the entire organization,” Wildhack said. “And that’s what we’re going to use it as.”

There's a lot of sports talk on ESPN during weekday afternoons, and last week the Poynter Review Project consumed a steady diet of it. I began at noon, with the last hour of "The Herd," a simulcast of Colin Cowherd's radio show, and after that switched between ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNEWS until 6 p.m., when either "Pardon the Interruption" or "SportsNation" ended.

Granted, that's a somewhat artificial diet. I suspect most ESPN viewers (or at least the gainfully employed ones) watch a show or two, rather than sit down for six hours at a stretch. But a weeklong immersion was a good way to gather impressions about what works, what doesn't, and how ESPN's choice of formats shapes the conversations that make these shows soar or struggle.

ESPN has an enviable amount of talent at its disposal, from veteran interviewers to interesting guests. Nearly everyone on the air had an impressive knowledge of sports, good points to make, and proved entertaining company.

But too often it felt like conversations were cut short or dumbed down. I don't blame the panelists, but the shows themselves. Over and over, I saw interesting discussions abandoned because a show was charging hard to the next segment, or intriguing conversations that failed to develop because panelists and viewers alike were focused on countdown clocks or scorekeeping. Such devices discourage real conversation in favor of sports bromides and manufactured disagreements.

The week's best conversations came when the pace was less frantic. "Outside the Lines" was consistently smart and informative, whether the topic was Joe Paterno, how things go awry for place-kickers, or stem-cell therapy for athletes. It helps that host Bob Ley is a superb interviewer, with a sure-handed way of nudging conversations in the desired direction and a sense of when an apparent tangent is actually a more interesting topic. Take Tuesday's show, when Ley patiently steered former NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart away from clichés about taking it to the next level, then followed writer Stefan Fatsis's lead into a good conversation about kickers' preparations.

We live in a hurry-up age in which not every show can move at the stately pace of OTL. But there were other times when ESPN personalities pushed more deeply into a subject in search of new insights and arguments.

On Tuesday's show, Cowherd argued that college coaches are often socially awkward and live in a bubble, which might help explain Paterno's reported bafflement about the sexual nature of alleged contacts between former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and boys. Cowherd flashed back to his days covering UNLV basketball under then-coach Jerry Tarkanian, whom Cowherd said was so immersed in coaching that he wasn't aware of the Iran hostage crisis -- even as it led the news every night. That was an angle on Paterno I hadn't heard before. The next day, Cowherd used the tiff between Peyton Manning and the Colts as a jumping-off point to discuss how difficult quarterback successions are for even the best-run NFL teams -- a topic that wouldn't have worked crammed into a quick bite. (The apparently tireless Cowherd also shows up on "SportsNation," but that show can barely catch its breath, and the audience chatter is a distraction.)

The Manning soap opera also led to a good conversation on the "Scott Van Pelt Show." On Friday, Van Pelt and co-host Ryen Russillo delved into Manning, Colts owner Jim Irsay and the best role for a team owner in today's age of constant communication. The conversation was engaging for a number of reasons: Van Pelt is thoughtful and curious, his rapport with Russillo feels easy and natural, and both are more interested in generating light than heat. But mostly, the segment worked because the two had time for an actual conversation.

Elsewhere, those conversations were harder to find. "Numbers Never Lie" is breezy and cheerful, but it's also a bait-and-switch, claiming to be "a nerdy show" but really just uses numbers as decorative elements for the kind of Just So Stories about teams' momentum and desire that you hear elsewhere. Wednesday's show was particularly aggravating: Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders used a relatively simple stat called "points prevented per drive" to demonstrate that the Patriots' defense bends but doesn't break. But fellow panelists Michael Smith and Hugh Douglas (another former pro) repeatedly cut him off with complaints such as "here we go with the decimals" and "you are making this game way too hard." It was pretend stupidity meant for comic effect, but by stifling any real conversation, it gave an uncomfortably convincing impression of the real thing.

Then there's "Around the Horn." Tony Reali is a slyly charming emcee, everybody seems to be having a good time, and the half-hour passes quickly enough. But "Around the Horn" is so full of countdown clocks, lightning rounds and tallying up points that the panelists -- many of them newspaper veterans known for lyrical writing -- struggle to have a real conversation. By boiling the talk down to scoring points, even in jest, "Around the Horn" encourages quick hits and contrived arguments, with nuance rare and insight hard to discover.

Take Monday's show. The gang was discussing Paterno, and panelist Woody Paige noted how former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes' secretary recalled the great coach's sadness after he was forced into retirement. It was a nice moment, but Reali cut him off because it was Tim Cowlishaw's turn. Later, Smith offered an evocative line about Paterno's legacy: "There's a 'but' with everybody. ... We're all going to leave with regrets." That could have been the start of a great conversation, but it was off to someone else. The format killed any chance for real discussion and deeper insight.

Sometimes shows rise above these limitations. "Pardon the Interruption" is also thick with segments, but it has fewer moving parts, and co-hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are so well-matched that you feel like you've dropped in on a years-long conversation. (Which you have.) Still, I found myself wishing I could watch them without timers and incessant reminders of upcoming topics. On Wednesday, the two dug into the Bruins' Tim Thomas refusing to visit the White House with his teammates. They brought up previous athletes who'd skipped the trip, wondered if Manny Ramirez knew there was a president, and pondered the difference between the president and the office of the president. Good stuff, and I would have listened to more, but the clock was running -- and so with that surface barely scratched, off we raced to something else.

The most pleasant surprise in the afternoon lineup is a recent addition -- "Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable," which features Le Batard (of the Miami Herald) and his father, Gonzalo, identified only as Papi. The two debate the sports stories of the day, with Papi playing the charming clown and the younger Le Batard in the unlikely role of straight man. "Highly Questionable" has the same on-camera ADD as the shows around it, but the goofy interplay between father and son fits the format. Even better are Le Batard's interviews: He's a fearless, slightly unhinged questioner, merrily needling guests and relentlessly pushing them into subject areas where you're not sure they or Le Batard really feel safe going.

The two Le Batards would be a poor fit for a show such as "Outside the Lines," but The Poynter Review Project thinks they are exceptions that prove the rule. In too many other cases, I found myself wishing the panelists had more time to address fewer subjects. That would let them make better use of the knowledge and passion that got them on ESPN in the first place.

With the Super Bowl upcoming and the NFL playoffs in the rearview mirror, we have the time and distance necessary to examine the phenomenon of Tebowmania and, specifically, to scrutinize ESPN's role in spreading the craze during the 2011 season.

Tebowmania was the national obsession with the Denver Broncos' quarterback. But it could also be described as an affliction besetting the media.

As watchers of all media, not just ESPN, we at the Poynter Review Project can verify that Tebowmania was in full force across all media, not just ESPN. New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni wrote about Tebow. National Public Radio did numerous stories, including an "All Things Considered" piece examining the mystery of Tebow's success and a "Morning Edition" story dissecting the grip Tebow has over Denver. Sports Illustrated featured Tebow on its cover, as did the NFL, which opted to debut its new magazine this fall by leading off with the former Heisman Trophy winner.

But ESPN took the cake, along with a lot of criticism, when it came to Tebowmania. And it goes back a long way. From the moment Tebow was drafted in the first round in 2010, folks at the network took notice.

"That was unexpected," said Craig Bengtson, senior coordinating producer for "SportsCenter." "From that day on, everyone who follows the NFL was waiting to see what happens with Tim Tebow."

Tebow coverage took off for ESPN in 2011. Among the highlights:

• Long before the NFL season opened, ESPN opened its Year of the Quarterback with an hourlong documentary on Tebow, which aired several times throughout the year.
• Commentator Skip Bayless spent an inordinate amount of time on "First Take" offering up praise for Tebow.
• Bayless' advocacy became the primary material for DJ Steve Porter's catchy Auto-Tune mashup, "All he does is win" used on "First Take."
• Tebow was the cover of the Oct. 31 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
• "SportsCenter" dedicated not one, but two special shows to Tebow.

It's hard to judge any of this as excessive. Tebow garnered a lot of buzz coming into the pros after a career in which his Florida Gators won two BCS championships and he won the Heisman, and was responsible for a special NCAA rule that forbids messages in eye paint after he used his to cite Bible verses. His Broncos No. 15 jersey tops NFL sales. He holds the record for most tweets per second on Twitter. He is a genuine social phenomenon, even without ESPN.

Thus came the messiah metaphors. ESPN The Magazine writer Tim Keown wrote his October story as a loose retelling of Jesus among the crowds. He described Tebow as a vessel of hope. It fit in nicely with the Plan B theme of that issue. (It was supposed to be the NBA preview issue, changed by the lockout.)

The Plan B issue featured Tebow on the cover (the best art available, according to Chad Millman, ESPN The Magazine's editor-in-chief.) The Sunday after that issue, Denver went to Miami, where Tebow brought the Broncos back from a 15-0 deficit in the final minutes of the fourth quarter, forcing overtime and eventually winning the game.

And suddenly Tebow really was a god. And he kept on winning, at least for a while, ultimately leading the Broncos to the playoffs, and prompting lots and lots of chatter along the way.

ESPN's success comes not from its coverage of games but from its ability to extend those games into a story and tell that story from different angles. Stories need main characters. Tebow is undoubtedly a main character, an epic hero to some, an unexposed great pretender to others.

Everyone we talked to at the network was unapologetic about the coverage. Whenever Tebow plays, fans watch. When sports anchors and radio hosts are talking about Tebow, the ratings go up. Every time Tebow does something unexpected or new, there will be a story. And you can expect someone, somewhere at ESPN to cover it.

So who objects to all this? As far as we can tell, the resentment comes from two places. When ESPN binges on a single story, viewers who value variety are offended. Then there are fans who care mainly about the play on the field. They follow the sport, not the story.

Les Young from Chesapeake, Va., wrote, "The ESPN sick love affair with Tim Tebow is way over the top. I've never seen so much attention heaped on a below average quarterback. It's on every show, and on the website every day. ESPN is the worldwide leader at something, alienating people who do not share their man crush."

The general underlying principle shared by the critics is that coverage of an athlete should relate to that athlete's talent and success. Some fans even accuse the network of fanning the flames of Tebowmania to ensure the story lives on. On that point, there is certainly a disconnect. Coverage of individual athletes is not a meritocracy at ESPN; it is based on what the crowd wants.

There are athletes who "move the needle," said Michael Shiffman, a senior coordinating producer for "SportsCenter." Critics might talk about fatigue over Tebow or any other athlete who draws disproportionate attention (Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Brett Favre et al), but folks at ESPN look at hard data.

"If you think interest is going down, the ratings show you otherwise," Shiffman said.

And then sometimes a story jumps off the sports pages.

"We are aware when things transcend sports. Hopefully we are out ahead of it and we've seen it coming," Shiffman said. "We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't see it coming."

That is the moment of disconnect. When a story gets bigger than the sport itself, and ESPN leans into that narrative rather than turning away, some fans throw up their hands and cry, "excess." But an all-sports network is the very definition of excess. We're not inclined to fault folks for doing the very thing that's made them successful.

What was Holly Rowe's reaction when a friend texted her that she was trending on Twitter?

"That can't be good."

On Jan. 3, the ESPN sideline reporter had interviewed Michigan football coach Brady Hoke after the Wolverines beat Virginia Tech in overtime to win the Sugar Bowl, 23-20. Some viewers noticed a curious encounter in the postgame, on-field scrum. Right after Hoke's handshake with Hokies coach Frank Beamer, the Michigan coach turned to face a woman with a tape recorder. But as he did so, Rowe arrived, shouldered the woman out of the way, then grabbed Hoke for an on-camera interview.

That maneuver sent blogosphere tongues wagging. Some admired Rowe's mettle, joking about stiff-arms, forearm shivers, sharp elbows, pushes or shoves. But others weren't laughing. Wrote one reader to the Poynter Review Project: "I felt it was very unprofessional. … What message does this send to our youth?" Another user called it "Absolutely revolting. She needs to make a public apology." And some saw the close encounter as ESPN crossing the line between dominance and bullying.

Was what happened on the field in New Orleans an aberration, or business as usual? Securing an on-field interview is often a half-contact sport, but there are commonly understood protocols for how it's done. Rowe didn't violate those and, from what we can tell, the woman she boxed out took no offense. Between some miscommunication and the scramble after an overtime win, viewers got an unexpected and somewhat startling look at postgame chaos that's fairly routine.

"There is no typical postgame," Rowe told us. "You can never predict what's happening. It's never as organized as you want -- it's always chaotic."

When the game ends, a lot happens at once. The players greet each other. The coaches, often accompanied by police and sometimes by event staff, wind through crowds and well-wishers to shake hands. Photographers, camera operators and reporters swarm the field to find the coaches and the game's stars. A huge number of folks -- from assistant coaches and PR people to equipment managers and TV crews -- are trying to do their jobs in a big space that suddenly seems small.

As a sideline reporter, Rowe said, "The zeroes go on the clock and you run -- I literally run."

Sometimes sideline reporters access players or coaches are helped by event officials, but most of the time they're on their own.

"It's frantic, you're running and hoping for the best," Rowe said. Sometime she has been "forearmed, pushed and knocked down" by security people who don't realize what she's doing. And all the while, producers are yelling in a reporter's ear, trying to establish when to cut away from the broadcast team and down to the field. (For another in-the-scrum perspective, here’s one from one-time ESPN sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein.)

Amidst the chaos, it's commonly understood protocol among the reporters that the first on-field coach interview (typically quite short) belongs to the holder of the TV rights for that game. Ed Placey, ESPN's coordinating producer of college football, says that right isn't contractually specified but that's because the media generally agree that a common understanding is preferable to rules that would keep reporters at bay or off the field.

"That's the last thing anybody would want," Placey said.

But several things were different at the Sugar Bowl, leading to a bit of a mess.

The game went to overtime, so ESPN didn't know in the final seconds who the winning coach would be, and couldn't position itself to intercept him. As the happy Wolverines dog-piled on the field, Hoke got a celebratory Gatorade bath, and Rowe said she got slammed in the back in the confusion and nearly fell.

"Our reporters are usually right there in [the coach's] hip pocket," Placey said. But given the sudden ending and the chaos, Rowe was late getting into position -- and somebody else was already there.

The other person wasn't a reporter but a staff member working for John Sudsbury, the Sugar Bowl's media relations director. Mindful that it was after midnight and reporters in the press box were on deadline, Sudsbury had sent the staff member down to get "quick quotes" from Hoke that reporters could use. It was, he said, "bad communication, probably on my part."

Rowe said that just as she was going to get to Hoke, Sudsbury's staffer arrived and started asking questions. "I said 'no no no' and slid in between her and the coach, put my arm around him," Rowe recalled.

Rowe didn't think it had been a big deal, but ESPN's high camera angle had caught the collision. (See it and some of what led up to it here, and a closer view here.) That also wasn't normal, Placey said; ESPN tries to avoid showing the reporter and crew setting up the live shot with the coach. This time it did, and the results were a Web hit.

With the video seemingly everywhere the next day, Rowe said she called Sudsbury's staffer, whom she knew from previous games. Rowe said the staffer reassured her that she wasn't offended, and they laughed about it; Sudsbury said the staffer "had no problem whatsoever."

(Through others, we reached out to the staffer for comment, but were told she'd prefer not to be an even bigger part of the story.)

We're satisfied that no harm was done on the field beyond giving viewers more of a look at how the postgame sausage gets made than ESPN -- or any other network -- would prefer.

"It didn't seem like an unusual scene to me," Placey said. "It just didn't look flattering on TV."

Said Rowe: "I feel bad that people think it was something mean," adding that "It happens all the time. It will happen again. You do have to be aggressive to get your interview."

On consecutive shows in October, ESPN's newsmagazine "E:60" included interviews with subjects whose speech wasn't always easy to understand. But the network made different choices in how it presented those interviews: the words of Jamie Convey, a 10-year-old white child with cerebral palsy from Philadelphia, weren't subtitled; those of Ernest Willis, an impoverished black man from Tennessee, were.

Intentional or not, that's the kind of contrast that can leave viewers asking questions and send bloggers to their keyboards. But conversations with members of the "E:60" production staff provide a window into the sometimes-agonizing decisions ESPN makes about when and how to use subtitles.

Subtitling, says "E:60" executive producer Andy Tennant, is "one of the most difficult and intense and thorough decisions we make."

Particularly when subjects are speaking English, subtitling defies blanket policies or sweeping generalizations, and there's rarely an answer that's clearly right or wrong. Every case is different, and every one generates debate. (For more on subtitling in the Willis and Convey cases, read Steve Marantz's blog entries here and here. They're from ESPN's in-house Production Notes blog, which is well worth a bookmark.)

We'll start with Willis.

"The Good Life" is the story of San Francisco 49ers all-pro linebacker Patrick Willis. It's gripping stuff: Willis and his three siblings grew up in poverty outside the little town of Bruceton, Tenn. Their mother left when they were quite young, and they say their father, Ernest Willis, beat and threatened them before state officials arranged fot their placement in foster care.

On the final day of shooting, producer Beein Gim learned that Ernest Willis wanted to answer his children's allegations in an interview. Gim noted that Willis spoke very quickly and occasionally rambled or mumbled, and there were points in the interview in which she didn't entirely follow his responses. When the interview was finished, a cameramen raised the possibility that Willis might have to be subtitled.

Coordinating producer Michael Baltierra saw an early version of "The Good Life" that lacked subtitles, and recalls having trouble understanding Willis despite having read the script. By the time ESPN staff members screened the "The Good Life," the subtitles had been added.

Above all, those involved with "The Good Life" say clarity was the major reason for subtitling Willis - clarity in the service of fairness. If the audience didn't understand what Willis was saying, his arguments on his own behalf would be undermined.

"Serious accusations were being made against this man," Baltierra says. "Even before we had the subtitling discussion, we talked a lot about making sure that any time someone accuses him of something in the piece, we have to give him a chance to respond."

So the question became whether viewers could understand Willis. ESPN staffers watched "The Good Life" twice, and those we interviewed agree that the audience of about 25 or so was split evenly between those who could follow what he was saying and those who couldn't. (They also note that staff members of various races were in the room, as were producers from Willis's native Tennessee.)

In pondering whether to subtitle, feature producer Lisa Binns tried to separate what she'd heard from what she'd read. During the first screening, she says, "I wasn't really listening as much, which I think is our tendency - if words are on the screen, we're drawn to them."

For the second screening, Binns says, she closed her eyes and listened - and understood what Willis was saying. That led her to argue that subtitling wasn't necessary - though she acknowledges that "of course I had the benefit of seeing it twice, which the viewer doesn't. . . . I couldn't say whether I understood him because I'd already seen it."

While the primary discussion was about clarity, the assembled staffers did discuss other concerns - what were the implications of subtitling "a black man from the South who's not wealthy," as Binns puts it. The decision not to subtitle Jamie Convey was also raised as part of that discussion.

Like Binns, Baltierra wondered if the subtitles had influenced the viewers in judging their own ability to understand Willis. So he and others in management watched segments of the raw interview without subtitles. Baltierra concluded that the audience would need help.

"I thought for a first-time viewer it would be almost impossible to get every nuance of his argument," he says.

That, Baltierra says, made the rest of the conversation "much clearer and easier" - sensitivity to race and socio-economics were worthy of discussion, but clarity trumped those concerns.

"Before everything else,'' he says, "the viewer has to understand what's going on in the story."

Clarity was also the primary concern in the decision of whether to subtitle Convey for "Radio Dreams", a moving story of a kid with a challenging disease chasing a dream. During the screening of that feature, Tennant says that "about 80 percent of the room" felt comfortable not subtitling him.

Again, clarity was the most important question, although a different story called for different criteria. The Convey interview was part of a portrait of the subject, while the Willis interview dealt point-by-point with specific allegations. If the audience didn't understand what Willis was saying in his own defense, that very defense would be rendered ineffective. But if Convey on occasion wasn't completely clear or not understood, the portrait would still work.
"There were one or two places where you might not follow what he's saying, but I get it," says Baltierra. "I'm not losing the thread of the story."

In the wake of the Willis piece, Binns suggested one change in ESPN's procedures.

"If there's ever a question," she said, "we should screen it without the subtitles first and see how people react to get a real read on whether this person can be understood or not. And then have a discussion."

It's advice Tennant says he plans to take. Given that the same issue came up with back-to-back shows, it's natural the two instances were linked. But those involved say that was simply a case of timing.

Binns thinks it's impossible to have a blanket policy for subtitling. She thinks the question will always be decided on a case-by-case basis, with the biggest concern whether the audience can understand what's being said the first time.

"You just have to make sure that the point people are trying to make gets through," Gim says. "It's about making sure voices that need to be heard get heard."

That sounds right to us.

There's a lot of outrage right now over ESPN's failure to report in 2003 that there were sexual abuse allegations against Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine.

We're hearing it from fans through the Poynter Review Project mailbag. And a handful of critics have called out the network via blogs and Twitter, suggesting that if ESPN was not confident enough to publish, it should have at least gone to law enforcement with its information.

Eight years ago, ESPN journalists spent significant time and energy over roughly a six-month period interviewing one alleged victim, Bobby Davis; listening to the now-infamous recording between Davis and Bernie Fine's wife, Laurie; and trying to get other possible victims to talk.

Based on what Vince Doria, ESPN's senior vice president and director of news, told us this week, it's clear that the network didn't have enough information to publish a story at that time. Going public would have been journalistically irresponsible.

In the wake of the recent indictment of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State, Mike Lang came forward as the second alleged victim to accuse Fine. But in 2003, according to Doria, Lang was denying that he had been molested. Along with Lang, who is Davis' stepbrother, another man ESPN interviewed in 2003 denied he was a victim, and another potential victim refused to talk. The Fines both refused to talk as well.

Fine was fired Sunday after the 10-year-old voice recording of his wife, Laurie, emerged in which she discusses her husband's alleged abuse of Davis, and after the accusations of another alleged victim, Zachary Tomaselli, came to light.

Many critics have suggested that the tape of Laurie Fine should have been enough for ESPN to go public. It's not. Nowhere on the tape does she describe firsthand knowledge of her husband abusing children. She says that she thinks there were other victims, and disturbingly acknowledges that she believes Davis was abused by her husband. But she doesn't describe why she believes that to be true or say she witnessed abuse herself. (ESPN also couldn't prove until recently the woman on the tape was actually Laurie Fine.)

Newsrooms often deal with damning allegations, with no way to gather enough evidence to prove they are true. That's what happened to The Idaho Statesman when it was investigating rumors that Sen. Larry Craig was gay. It's also what happened to the St. Petersburg Times (which is owned by The Poynter Institute) and the Miami Herald when they investigated Rep. Mark Foley's questionable relationships with congressional pages.

When it comes to behavior behind closed doors, journalists often hit a dead end. When this happens, a journalism investigation becomes like a detective's cold case. You can keep knocking on doors, even though the chances of turning up new information seem remote and you do so at the expense of other investigations. You can also put the investigation on a back burner, stoking it only when new information arises. Or, you can drop it, which is what ESPN did in 2003.

We think the network gave up prematurely.

The network should have pursued two more lines of inquiry. First, someone should have called the chief of police in Syracuse (who, it turns out, was a former Syracuse basketball player, although no one at ESPN knew that at the time. But if they'd called, maybe they would have.) Reporters should have asked the police department why it wasn't pursuing an investigation. Given all that we know about people who sexually abuse children, if there was evidence to substantiate one case, it seems reasonable that police should look for more recent victims.

"We weren't looking to do any kind of examination of the Syracuse Police Department," Doria said. "We maybe could have checked further. At the time, Dennis Duvall was the chief, maybe if we had been aware of that, it would have piqued our interest."

Second, ESPN journalists should have called someone in the Syracuse president's office to ask whether there were other complaints and to review policies that govern the interaction of employees and children.

These two basic lines of inquiry could have shaken something loose. We do not believe ESPN acted with gross negligence, but rather a lack of persistence. And we don't believe ESPN was responsible for leaving other children vulnerable; that's on the Syracuse PD.

ESPN's lack of persistence is all the more glaring because by 2003, we as a society were coming to grips with the full implications of the systemic failure of the Catholic Church to protect children. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Northeast region, where Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law had lost his post in the wake of evidence (uncovered by Doria's former employer, The Boston Globe) that Law protected priests rather than hold them accountable.

There are a lot of parallels between the culture of sports and the culture of the Catholic Church. They are dominated by men. Successful leaders are lionized and worshipped by their followers. And there's a lot of money and power at stake.

When you pull back from the narrow view of the sports world and look at the broader picture, it's obvious that certain institutions are vulnerable to turning a blind eye to child sexual abuse. Part of the watchdog role of journalists is to hold those powerful institutions accountable.

ESPN and other journalists could have, and should have, tried harder to do that back in 2003. It's possible the network still would have fallen short of the threshold to go public. But if ESPN had exhausted all the reporting possibilities at the time, today it could say in good conscience its news-gatherers did all they could do.

Instead, the best the network can say is that it did almost everything possible. It doesn't sound quite as good.

Earlier this month, ESPN debuted “Unguarded,” the story of Massachusetts basketball prodigy Chris Herren, whose battles with substance abuse dogged his college hoops and NBA careers.

The documentary, directed by Jonathan Hock, is an unflinching, often-riveting look at Herren’s struggles and his efforts to overcome them and reclaim his life. The film's Nov. 1 premiere was well-received, except for one false note: Given Herren’s demons, why was the documentary sponsored in part by whiskey maker Jameson?

The contrast between Herren’s scary stories of drug and alcohol abuse and that particular sponsorship made for a jarring juxtaposition -- and Twitterers, bloggers and readers who wrote to us wanted to know how ESPN could have been so insensitive.

The answer: It was a mistake, one ESPN moved quickly to correct.

According to ESPN, the network noticed tweets about the Jameson sponsorship the night of the film’s premiere, discussed the issue the next morning, and then pulled the whiskey maker’s “billboard” (the on-screen corporate logo and sponsorship message) from all subsequent airings. Only the premiere carried the Jameson sponsorship.

Executives at Jameson were part of those morning-after discussions, and they agreed with dropping the billboard. The whiskey maker is a sponsor of the overall ESPN Films series, not just “Unguarded.”

“We were unaware of the content in this particular film (which made it inappropriate for our brand), and would not have sponsored the film if we had been aware,” Jameson told us in a prepared statement.

So how did this happen in the first place? Blame autopilot on the part of ESPN’s standards-and-practices group, which is responsible for making sure commercials and advertising messages are appropriate for the programming, time of day and other considerations.

In this case, the non-standard format of the ESPN Films series was apparently a contributing factor. The films are shown with limited commercial interruptions, with sponsors such as Jameson and Buick providing financial support without the same level of branding seen with regular 30-second commercials. In the right setting, such sponsorships are considered a good thing for viewers and advertisers alike.

But ESPN’s standards-and-practices group mostly worries about traditional commercials. For “Unguarded,” the group had few traditional ad spots to catch, and Jameson was a familiar name as a series sponsor. Combine those two things, and, well, the group let its guard down.

“We erred on the side of trying to be innovative in terms of the advertising environment and in trying to provide our fans a limited-interruption environment,” said Ed Erhardt, ESPN's president of consumer sales and marketing. “Unfortunately the film for this one brand wasn’t the right connection. We responded as quickly as we could.”

Erhardt doesn’t see a need to change ESPN’s procedures, beyond a reminder that the standards-and-practices team needs to be eagle-eyed, even outside of its routines. That sounds right to us.

“These things occur,” Erhardt says. “It’s one of those things where you say, ‘Let’s be sure we’re looking at everything.’ And ‘everything’ includes the limited-commercial-interruption billboards.”

Earlier this week, Fox Sports' Jay Glazer reported that the Cincinnati Bengals had traded Carson Palmer to the Oakland Raiders, ending the quarterback's season-long retirement. Amid analysis of the trade came questions about whether ESPN's NFL reporter Adam Schefter had known about the deal Monday night, but opted not to report it to avoid scuttling the trade.

The questions started, as things often do these days, with a tweet -- one seemingly out of left field. It came from John Shahidi, the CEO of iPhone app maker RockLive. This was Shahidi's Tuesday morning tweet: "Thank you @AdamSchefter for the hard work last night. Deal happened last night but he stayed silent to protect CP and the deal..."

Shahidi would soon delete that tweet, offering instead an amended one. Too late -- legendary wide receiver and ESPN analyst Jerry Rice already had retweeted the initial one, leaving tongues wagging across the sports-media world. Had Schefter sacrificed a scoop by holding off on his story at the request of people close to Palmer? Or had he been restricted by an ESPN policy directing reporters to break news on ESPN platforms before distributing it on Twitter?

Schefter and ESPN say they weren't protecting anybody, and didn't run the story initially because they hadn't confirmed it. Schefter called that near miss "one of the most frustrating and disappointing stories I've ever encountered."

Vince Doria, ESPN's senior vice president and director of news, said that both Schefter and his fellow NFL reporter Chris Mortensen were working on the story on Monday night, but neither could confirm the trade. The reporters knew Cincinnati was talking to Oakland, and was at least considering a deal. But they also heard from "at least two pretty good sources" that the deal might not happen, Doria said.

Schefter said that at around 6 p.m. Monday, he got "an FYI" to be on the lookout for a potential Palmer trade -- a possibility that a Yahoo report had raised earlier in the day. He reached out to sources with the Bengals and Raiders, but his Bengals contact said "I doubt it" while his Raiders source described the trade as "falling apart."

Schefter brought in Mortensen, and the two kept "sniffing around" on the story that night and into Tuesday morning, over what Schefter called "an incredibly stressful 15 hours." At 9:41 a.m. Tuesday, Schefter said, he got a text message from a source with one of the teams outlining the trade and asking to be protected -- but no further word on the status of the trade. Schefter said he sent a text in reply seeking clarification, but got no reply.

If he had gotten a clarifying reply, Schefter said ruefully, he would have broken the story and "we're not having this conversation. ... Mort and I had a story written. We sensed it was coming."

Schefter called the suggestion that he'd protected Palmer "absurd and insulting."

"Why would I sit on a story that big?" he asked.

Schefter also made it clear to Poynter that he has trust issues with Palmer, the result of a previous journalistic run-in (we'll avoid the details here, other than to say it makes Schefter an unlikely candidate to do Palmer any favors).

Shahidi's role seems odd at first, but makes more sense once you know that Carson Palmer's brother Jordan is a partner in RockLive. Asked about his tweet, Shahidi told us that "I worded it wrong, nothing else. I'm sure if Adam knew about it, he would have reported it." (Asked how he felt when he saw Rice's retweet, Shahidi said he thought it "was cool that he followed me. I had no clue.")

For his part, Schefter said he's talked to Shahidi in the past, but didn't contact him for the Palmer story. Given his Palmer connections, Schefter said, "John probably thought I had the story," and added that it's possible that Shahidi "knew more than I did."

Cooperating with sources in hopes of landing a scoop is age-old journalistic practice, though it always raises eyebrows. Reporters and editors sometimes find themselves in dicey territory, with loyalty to sources and their own ambitions competing with their bedrock responsibility to readers. But in this case, the scoop was the real reward, and it's hard to imagine for what Schefter might have been holding out.

It's also true that sources and those close to them sometimes assume they know more than they do, a situation that more than one canny reporter has turned to his or her advantage. In the digital age, though, sources and bystanders can be publishers in their own right, turning private assumptions and conjecture into public water-cooler talk -- particularly when a famous athlete fans the flames. (ESPN's policy on distributing news via Twitter is an interesting topic that deserves its own post; expect more on that from us in the future.)

In retrospect, Doria said, ESPN should have advanced the story by reporting that the two teams were talking, instead of trying to lock down a confirmation of the trade. In effect, the reporters let perfect be the enemy of good.

Schefter agreed, saying that "What we should have done was reach out to our news desk and said 'Here's where we are.' ... I've relied on my judgment for 20-plus years. By and large my judgment has worked out. This was one time when I could not pin down the story."

Former ESPN college football columnist Bruce Feldman debuted his new column at CBSSports.com Thursday. In addition to sharing his picks for this weekend's games, Feldman separately shared with other sports journalists a host of accusations about his departure from ESPN and the company's alleged lies to the Poynter Review Project and the public.

Feldman's story and ESPN's story do not match up.

We spoke with ESPN officials for the previous Poynter Review column on this situation, but not with Feldman, whom we spoke with twice this week - a 12-minute phone call on Thursday and a 35-minute call on Monday. Based on those conversations as well as interviews Feldman gave to Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch and radio host Dan Patrick, we've identified two main criticisms of us that merit responses:

• Feldman says that ESPN Executive Vice President John Skipper instructed him not to participate in an interview with Poynter for a July column on the controversy around Feldman's role in writing a book with former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach.

This is the most serious allegation Feldman makes, because if it's true, it undermines the foundation of Poynter's role in reviewing and publicly commenting on ESPN's efforts.

"It is categorically inaccurate that I told him not to talk to you guys. I am a little displeased with his actions," Skipper said Thursday night on the phone. He said that he called Feldman in July to encourage him to "relax." Feldman responded to that advice by saying, "the Poynter Institute called, I'm going to tell them you're all a bunch of liars," Skipper said.

"I suggested that getting into a public fight with your employer and calling them liars was not wise," he said.

As our column neared its publication in July, Skipper said, "I called Bruce and said, 'If you feel that you need to go on the record with The Poynter Institute, you should do so. I will confess that I said, 'You need to remain careful.' "

Feldman told us during a phone call Thursday evening that his wife was listening back in July when Skipper warned him not to talk to us. We asked if we could talk to her. That's when Feldman hung up the phone, saying he was needed in makeup, and then on air at CBS. He promised to call back but never did, nor did he respond to a text message late in the evening.

• Whether or not it was a formal "suspension," Feldman said that Chad Millman, editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine, never really let him come back to work, preventing him from attending the SEC's media days, enforcing a "do not book" status and insisting on unreasonable editing policies.

Millman told us the same thing on Thursday that he said back in July. He said Feldman was very concerned about showing up at the Southeastern Conference media event and having other reporters focus on him.

"I remember he and I having a conversation that he didn't want to be the eye of the storm and he didn't want to be the story," Millman said. "He was scheduled to go to (SEC) media days and I said, 'It's up to you, but you'll get asked about it.' "

He said they brainstormed alternative events in other conferences where there would be fewer journalists likely to turn the questioning on Feldman. He ultimately did a video segment for ESPN.com from the Pac-12 media day.

"That is not true, the SEC is a big deal to me," Feldman said in response Thursday night. "That is complete B.S. I said to him that the least of my concerns coming out of this is press coverage."

On the "do not book" policy, Millman said talent bookers were constantly asking if they could use Feldman on the air and he told them all yes. On Aug. 8, Feldman appeared on an ESPNU show.

Millman said he did request to see Feldman's Insider column before it was published, and that was a change from their earlier arrangement.

"I wanted to make sure there wasn't a blow up, and be aware of ties to Mike Leach and other coaches, that worked with Leach," he said.

Feldman insisted this was unreasonable because it's not the treatment other Insider writers receive. We think extra editing is always a good thing.

Our initial analysis in this dispute faulted ESPN for allowing Feldman to sign a book deal that had him authoring an autobiography for one of the more controversial figures in college football.

While we originally laid the blame on ESPN, we also suggested that Feldman shared a smaller portion of responsibility for the situation because he failed to seek clarity. Feldman told us and others that he repeatedly sought clarity.

The longest conversation we had with Feldman was Monday afternoon, before he announced his departure to CBS. He called to ask about our sourcing and the editing process. We listened to him for approximately 35 minutes, asking for details and evidence to clarify his assertion that he had repeatedly asked his bosses at ESPN for guidance and that Skipper told him not to talk to us in July.

He described one series of conversations in the Spring of 2010 with editors, which we wrote about in July. And he described conversations with ESPN's lawyers six months before his book was released, but said he did not know if his editors knew he was talking to the lawyers. He didn't provide any details about his conversations with Skipper.

He suggested that his conflicts, created by writing the book, are tiny compared to those of Craig James, the ESPN announcer named in Leach's lawsuit. If the allegations in the lawsuit are accurate -- that James hired a PR firm to smear Leach -- then ESPN has an even bigger problem that we'll certainly be writing about.

But that ethical problem that doesn't overshadow or eliminate ESPN's responsibility when facing other ethical issues. The network should have never let Feldman do the book, because it devalued one their best NCAA football insiders.

The primary ethical failure still rests on ESPN's shoulders. It grows out of a bad policy that allows "as told to" books and a failure of leadership to step in and prevent Feldman from going forward with the book when it became clear that the publication would create an impossible tension.

But if your boss won't protect your credibility, you have to do it yourself. Feldman should have recognized that in writing Leach's book, he was becoming too much of an insider on that topic, walling himself off from too many important stories.

Now his conflicts are CBS Sports' problems. And ESPN, and the Poynter Review Project, are left to address the James issue.