The Athletic has now reached 600,000 subscribers but that doesn’t mean they can’t take some advice. Marc Stein of the New York Times had some this morning in another clear shot at The Athletic’s NBA insider Shams Charania.
This is likely related to Charania’s report last night that Ty Lue was joining the Clippers coaching staff. On August 14, Stein reported the Clippers were “closing in” on signing Lue. Charania’s tweet has no mention of Stein’s initial report from the week before. Last year, Stein took issue with Charania’s report involving Darius Bazley that came out seven minutes after his with no attribution.
Attribution has always been a thorny issue in sports media — and presumably all media — but the existence of Twitter means the timeline is frankly out there for everyone to see. And it expands well beyond just Stein and Charania. It happened just last night involving a boxing report that Gennady Golovkin would be facing Sergiy Derevyanchenko on October 5. It was first reported by The Athletic’s Mike Coppinger at 8:43 p.m. ET and at 9:32 p.m. ET, ESPN’s Dan Rafael reported the same news with no mention of Coppinger’s report. And as those that follow up-to-the-minute NFL news know, it happens there weekly as well.
And while Stein’s pushback was fun and warranted, it’s unlikely change much behavior in the insider game.
