{"id":30555,"date":"2016-12-10T15:58:05","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T20:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=30555"},"modified":"2016-12-10T18:02:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T23:02:31","slug":"how-i-learned-the-facts-of-life-professor-george-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=30555","title":{"rendered":"How I Learned the Facts of Life: Professor George Young"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when I wrote about football<\/a>, George Young, the New York Giants\u2019 long-time general manager, became a dear friend. Most of what I comprehend about the game I learned from George, whose teaching usually came in the form of gnomic aphorisms.<\/p>\n

We spent hours on the phone talking about football players, politics, lunacy both football and political (George described himself as, \u201cOne of the few Democrats in a league slightly to the right of Attila the Hun”), history (George had taught it), food (he lost a ton of weight), and journalists\u2013especially, of course, the many, many reporters who covered the Giants.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the modus operandi<\/em> of the Giants\u2019 press corp became my particular fascination.<\/p>\n

Then and now I read a lot of football press coverage. During the week between games there isn\u2019t a lot of real news, and each reporter is restricted to covering the minute aspects of a player\u2019s slightly (or OMG! not) pulled hamstring.<\/p>\n

Naturally, each reporter tries to thrust his story before the others. The time-honored way of grabbing attention is by reporting a story that no one else has\u2013digging out an insider tale, the more negative the better.<\/p>\n

During the 1990s, a writer I\u2019d met and enjoyed reading began to report some Giants locker room conflict. The writer\u2019s source was a player who \u201cpreferred to remain anonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story, surreptitious and vague, made me uneasy. After a few weeks of such discomfort, I called George and asked him about it.<\/p>\n

He gave an idiosyncratic huff. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing–\u201d Then he huffed again and said, \u201cSportswriters shouldn\u2019t be cozying up to players. It damages their credibility. [This writer] worked himself into a friendship with [a particular player]. He prods [the player] to tell him about internal problems and [that particular player] likes to talk and complain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing in this story, no trouble in the locker room.\u201d Then George thought for a moment and said, \u201cYou know how to determine if it\u2019s a genuine story? Read the other beat writers. If it\u2019s real, they\u2019d be picking up on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He asked me whether any other writer had been reporting conflict in the locker room.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how you know it isn\u2019t a story,\u201d said George Young.<\/p>\n

But things have changed a lot since George and I talked. The mad proliferation of social media must have wiped out George\u2019s Rule, right?<\/p>\n

No. Sure, the burden of carving through the massive amount of noise passing for news falls on us readers. But then it always did.<\/p>\n

Back when I was uneasy about trouble in the locker room, there were only a couple of newspapers I had to check into, to see if the story had been picked up. Nowadays, I\u2019d have to check…the same couple of newspapers. Yes, I check them digitally but that’s the only difference. Whatever else is out there in cyberspace purporting to be factual football news isn’t. It’s rumor or some dude’s opinion.<\/p>\n

So let me edit only slightly George\u2019s Rule. I\u2019ve bolded the alteration: \u201cYou know how to determine if it\u2019s a genuine story? Read a few other credible sources<\/strong>. If it\u2019s real, they\u2019d be picking up on it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when I wrote about football, George Young, the New York Giants\u2019 long-time general manager, became a dear friend. Most of what I comprehend about the game I learned from George, whose teaching usually came in the form of gnomic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1175],"tags":[1182,1209,1208,1176],"class_list":["post-30555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-facts-of-life","tag-fake-news","tag-football-facts","tag-how-i-learned-the-facts-of-life","tag-the-facts-of-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t