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Monday
Report
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This week's report by Joe Sheltraw
How to Write Fiction for the Daily Newspaper:
The Mitch Albom Case
People enjoy reading newspaper columnist and author Mitch
Albom because he writes heartfelt stories. Whether it be
depicting the hardship tales of the highly recruited University
of Michigan basketball players he profiled in Fab Five:
Basketball, Trash Talk, the American Dream, or detailing the
life lessons learned from one Morrie Schwartz, the former
Brandeis University professor dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, in
his best-selling Tuesdays with Morrie, Albom popularizes the
idea that no matter the circumstances, the heart reigns supreme.
His syndicated newspaper column reeks of the same sugar
sweetness, dissecting such recent controversial topics as his
mother’s life and the high school prom. Now a novelist and a
playwright (his next play, And the Winner Is, has its world-
premiere on June 23) in addition to being a sportswriter,
columnist and radio talk-show host, Albom is a thriving
corporate industry of his own, jetting between homes in suburban
Detroit and Los Angeles, a celebrity among celebrities, writing
morality tales that continue to twist and turn our emotional
nuts.
Then something happened recently during the sold-out
production of Mitch Albom.
Mitch got lazy.
The story that tarnished Mitch Albom’s reputation goes
something like this: in late March 2005, Albom interviewed two
ex-Michigan State University basketball players, Mateen Cleaves
and Jason Richardson, for a Detroit Free Press column he was
writing about the 2004-05 MSU basketball team’s appearance in
the NCAA Final Four. Both players told Albom that they were
planning to sit in the stands during the MSU-North Carolina
Final Four basketball game. Albom finished the column on Friday,
April 1—depicting both Cleaves and Richardson as fans cheering
wildly together for their team while at the same time
reminiscing about their college past—a day before the actual
game took place. The story ran the following Sunday, April 3.
Albom anticipated both players would stick to the plan about
being at the game. Unfortunately for Mitch, neither attended.
Some readers noted this and, thus, Albom got burned. He was
suspended from the Free Press on Friday, April 8, but not
before he wrote a short mea culpa column on Thursday, April 7,
apologizing to readers for his actions.
The mistake Albom made was huge for this reason and this
reason only: he fictionalized something that never happened.
Several of Albom’s peers (other sportswriters and journalists)
have defended Albom by stating he simply forgot to use the
future tense in the column. But what they don’t tell you is
this: even if Richardson and Cleaves appeared at the game, who
is to say they would have sat together? Who is to say they would
have sat in the stands at all and not in some luxury box or in
press box row? Albom was still presenting a scenario—a scene
from one of his upcoming plays, perhaps—which was fiction to
begin with. He made it up. Sure, the athletes themselves
probably suggested to Albom they would sit together, but Albom
turned their suggestion into a fact. And for that one lie, Albom
has been given permission to continue writing his columns.
On Friday, April 29, the Detroit Free Press reinstated Albom,
ending his three-week suspension from the paper. The following
Sunday, May 1, the paper published Albom's first post-suspension
column, a second mea culpa with a self-congratulatory pat on the
back tossed in (since Albom, holding back his anger, admits in
the piece, “I will not swipe at those who swiped at me”— i.e.,
his critics).
It goes without saying that if a lesser sportswriter (i.e.,
one without a regular radio and ESPN gig) did what Albom did and
got caught, he/she would have been fired in a heartbeat. It’s a
known fact that journalists do get fired for doing stupid
things. (Just read Romenesko’s media column at www.poynter.org
if you don’t believe this.) So being a newspaper columnist and a
media celebrity does afford you some luxury. Numerous newspaper
editors across the country have even suggested the Free Press
should have fired Albom for his transgression. But honestly: was
there really a doubt an actual firing would occur? And would
Albom actually be humble enough to admit that his star status
afforded him a pardon?
Of course, Albom never addresses this celebrity issue in
either of his mea culpa columns. What he does do is take the
easy route, justifying his mistake as one of simple human
failure. Okay, let’s say for a moment that’s true—that Albom
made an honest mistake. Wouldn’t he then follow with an
admission about what it means to be wrong? He doesn’t. He can’t
because deep down Mitch Albom doesn’t believe he actually made a
mistake. Subheads used within his second mea culpa column
suggest humility—“A Time for Reflection,” “A Time for
Forgiveness” —without explicitly delving into the reasons behind
his blunder. Instead, he bluffs modesty, simplistically
explaining himself through the use of two simple fragments: “Too
fast. Too dangerous.” Taken at face value, these four words tell
us that because he is so busy pimping himself to the masses via
other mediums like books, radio and TV, he made up information
in a short column about two basketball players. And that's
“dangerous.” Wow. What he forgets to mention is how his employer
had already forgiven him; so what’s the crime? What’s dangerous?
To this writer, what’s dangerous is how Albom keeps mass-
producing himself with various safety nets placed beneath him.
What's dangerous is that his editors missed the same mistakes,
let the column hit the wire unedited, and they, too, have been
forgiven. Two years before (ironically, almost to the month),
Albom chastised the seemingly unforgivable Jayson Blair for
being a liar, yet doesn’t understand at all how his one simple
mistake of creating an event that never happened has so much to
say about how we treat the privileged few.
Albom’s pampered treatment at the Free Press is depicted at
length in the recent May 16, 2005 Detroit Free Press article,
“Albom Probe Shows No Pattern of Deception.” In this article,
Free Press staff writers David Zeman, Jeff Seidel, Jennifer
Dixon and Tamara Audi boldly investigate the Albom incident, and
what they find is surprising. Along with fictionalizing a
scenario, Albom was also guilty of misappropriating quotes in
several of his past columns (which, the article mentions, other
Free Press columnists were guilty of doing as well). The article
also presents Albom as a diva of sorts, a “hotshot” who quickly
obtained star status from his editors soon after his arrival at
the Free Press in 1985. The article goes on to note how Albom’s
star status affected other departments of the paper. Editors,
for instance, “prodded” the paper’s book and TV critics to write
reviews of Albom’s literary work—and the TV movies produced from
that work—in a daily newspaper that is supposed to be promoting
objectivity. As a result, Albom is a man who is neither admired
nor cherished as a colleague. “He’s not a warm and fuzzy guy,”
Curt Sylvester, a Free Press sportswriter for more than 25
years, says in the article.
Not warm and fuzzy? Mitch? Can it be that Albom the person is
not like Albom the writer? The man behind the neck-nuzzling, hug-
inducing The Five People You Meet in Heaven? If true, then how
exactly does Albom the writer know how to portray such heart and
emotion in his columns and sell all those books?
He does it doing what any popular, market-driven writer does:
by giving the public what it wants.
Albom epitomizes the celebrity writer we read today, not only
in newspapers but in literature as well. These writers do not
challenge readers with bold opinions about our culture or strong
proclamations against authority. Rather, they present us with
stories about the simple life lessons learned from a particular
event (often tragic or sad) or person (often dying or sad). And
they write these tales in disguises, presenting themselves as
one of us—regular people with regular jobs—even though they live
in large expensive houses or gated communities, removed from
society. These writers don’t really care about their subjects;
all they care about is finding the emotional nugget that will
sell. Their significance as celebrities is something more
important to cultivate than the actual writing. Writers like
Albom worry more about how much they can produce rather than
what is produced. And Albom proved that himself by quickly
dashing off a column on April Fools’ Day about events at a game
that never occurred.
The bottom line is that Albom cheated the system and got away
with it. And the lesson learned is this: any newspaper writer
who knows how to market himself correctly in corporate America
(i.e., plant himself/herself firmly as a editor’s favorite, an
endless self-promoter, or an expert "talking head" on a radio or
TV show) will rarely fail.
Since it’s clear that the Free Press publishers don’t have the
balls to fire him, the least Albom should do is suspend himself
for a year or two, without pay. But would that really solve
anything? Would a self-imposed ban actually address the issue?
If anything, it would probably extinguish it. Albom could
probably do without the extra stress of writing a weekly column
to focus on his plays and novels, which his corporate publishing
and media contracts afford him. It’s not like the guilty will
actually suffer. If anything, his disappearance from the daily
newspaper will punish the newspaper industry itself. And that’s
the real agenda behind Albom’s reinstatement: the Free Press
cannot afford to lose famous columnists like him. The
competition for Albom’s services, if he were fired, would be too
great and the paper's circulation numbers (already dwindling
because of the Internet) would suffer.
So consider the Albom case as yet another example of corporate
greed. Or, if that’s too simplistic, try this: think of the
future book or play that will come out of this incident. Think
of the future book or play that will be mass-produced, shoved
down our throats, and over commercialized due to the simple
mistake of Mitch Albom not doing his job.
###
Joe Sheltraw is a freelance writer/copy
editor who resides in Pontiac, Michigan.
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