HOW DOES PABLO TORRE WIN A PULITZER PRIZE FOR “SEEMINGLY” BREAKING A BIG STORY?
The board used a vague description — in journalism, the best stories are perfect — and NBA commissioner Adam Silver must punish Steve Ballmer for Torre to avoid a hollow award amid swings and misses
A journalist won a Pulitzer Prize for “seemingly” breaking a story. “Seemingly” is not what was demanded from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein when they toppled Richard Nixon. “Seemingly” never has been a qualifier in an industry that must be perfect.
But Pablo Torre — who was wrong about Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson at North Carolina and wrong about NFL Hall of Famer Antonio Gates playing in a rigged poker game — won the audio reporting award Monday for “seemingly” busting Steve Ballmer. The New Oxford American dictionary explains that “seeming” appears to be “real or true, but not necessarily being so.” Yet the Pulitzer judges honored Torre for investigating “how the Los Angeles Clippers seemingly evaded the NBA’s salary cap rules by funneling money to a star player through an environmental startup.”
If the story turns out to be true, good for Torre, who went to Harvard and greased Tony Kornheiser’s scalp on “Pardon the Interruption.” But if it is not true — and we won’t know until league commissioner Adam Silver says it is or isn’t — I must ask what in the name of hellishness the Pulitzer board was thinking. Sports media usually are ignored for the major awards. Now, we have no idea if he was correct on his podcast (“Pablo Torre Finds Out”) or soon will be blown up by the NBA’s billionaires. Victims are erased by grand investigations. Ballmer and his star player, Kawhi Leonard, are up and alive.
Seemingly? Give me the award. All I do is tell the truth when the facts agree.
Anyone wondering about the lame future of media should think about the bosses. I’ve told stories about previous crooks at the Chicago Sun-Times. Would someone explain why Kevin Merida was a Pulitzer judge when he has a direct relationship with John Skipper, who co-founded Meadowlark Media with Dan Le Batard? It’s the company that hired Torre and sold his podcast to The Athletic. Merida was above board when he quit his executive editor job at the Los Angeles Times and currently serves as a contributing essayist at the Washington Post. But did the co-chairs, Nancy Barnes and Nicole Carroll, realize Merida and Skipper have a workplace connection with Torre?
When journalism calls out flaws in judging — say, in sports — the Pulitzers must keep a clean roster. That way, “seemingly” doesn’t cause such a stir. Le Batard should be asking why his longtime show partner, Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, offered a new job to Dianna Russini. If she wants to work after her rendezvous with Mike Vrabel left her unemployed, Stugotz has the gig. The media business is filled with wackos, right?
“I did say if the Athletic fired her, I would hire her,” Stugotz said on his podcast. “They didn’t fire her. She stepped down from The Athletic, and the offer holds forever. ... If Dianna Russini decides one day, three months from now, a year from now, two years from now, that she wants to get back into this game, she has a place right here.”
The opportunity brings attention to Weiner, which is why ESPN is inviting Skip Bayless to host a “one-time show” with Stephen A. Smith. Last we saw Bayless, he was tossed by Fox Sports after he allegedly offered a hairstylist more than $1 million for sex. Why is ESPN heading down this raunchy road? Oh, ratings, when Smith’s one-year increase is merely 5 percent when Pat McAfee’s hike is more than three times higher.
Bayless is 74. He’s only nine years younger than Jerry Jones. No one cares. Stephen A. is attracting only 517,000 daily viewers, far fewer than “Around The Horn” when I appeared as a dominant regular for eight years. Is this finally the end of Smith, who has been more boneheaded than usual?
People have asked why I don’t like Torre. My problems are the people in charge of his career. He can do nothing wrong, even when North Carolina had to correct his bogus claim that Hudson was removed from Belichick’s practice field and football facility. Even when Gates’ representative shot down the poker report, saying, “Antonio Gates has not been involved nor has he been accused of any wrongdoing, assertions to the contrary are false and without merit.”
You cannot be wrong and win a Pulitzer. For his sake, let’s hope Silver bans Ballmer. But if the penalty is small or amounts to nothing — “I think we’re going to be in the clear,” Leonard said — it might be time to investigate the Pulitzer board. What exactly did Pablo Torre find out?
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.