cyber (in)civility

In which we dig into the escalating incivility that greets sports writers, thanks to the anonymity of the interwebs Go to CNN.com to find out how sportswriter Jeff Pearlman dealt with some of his vilest haters.

He tracked them down. And called them up. Here's a taste of his column:

Recently, in response to something I wrote on my blog about Jeff Bagwell and the Baseball Hall of Fame, Matt tweeted me a couple of times.

The words were snarky and snide and rude. His final message, however, left an extra special impression: "I got caught up in the anonymity of the internet. I'm sorry and here is a legit post with my criticisms." Upon opening the pasted link, I was greeted by a nasty pornographic image that would make Sasha Grey vomit into the nearest trash can.

...

Normally, this sort of thing doesn't faze me. Write sports for a living (especially online, as I do for SI.com), insults come with the turf. You're dumb. You suck. You're an idiot. You're a moron. I'll never read your crap again. That's the %#$$ #$@@#$ %$$# thing I've ever heard. How do you have a job? Go to hell. Screw yourself. Drop dead.

I've heard them all, and aside from occasionally entertaining my wife with a reading from my Greatest Hits Packet ("I call it my 'Go back to Africa' folder," says Howard Bryant, an African-American ESPN.com senior writer), I turn the other cheek and move on.

But not this time.

This time, I aspired to know why Matt, cloaked in the anonymity provided by the internet, felt the need to respond in such a way to, of all things, a Jeff Bagwell post.

So, going deep, deep, deep undercover, I tracked him down and, shortly after our exchange, gave him a call....

What he found was not what he expected.

advancing the story

Melissa forwards the following links:

The first is to a story by Sports Illustrated writer Jeff Pearlman, who used the recent tragedy of the athletes recently lost in the Gulf of Mexico as the newshook for an elegant story that remembers Anthony Latham, who drowned under similar circumstances in 1983. Pay special attention to the way in which the story develops, its fluid structure, and most importantly, the ending.

As all good endings should, it lingers. As Melissa wrote, "I would kill to have written that last line."

But equally worth a read, especially for any enterprising reporters, is this link to Pearlman's blog in which he outlines his development of the story, step by step. bk