End of the Albom Saga?

The Detroit Free Press reports that he and four others will be disciplined for his infamous Final Four clarvoyant column making it into the paper. He'll return to the pages of the Freep.

Meanwhile, David Shaw wrote a media column about the Albom situation that appeared in Sunday's L.A. Times Calendar section. Note that it was written ahead for a preprinted section -- which Shaw acknowledges -- and was therefore completed before the Free Press' action was announced.

Left Coast on Albom

The Los Angeles Times weighs in todaywith an overview-type piece written by David Lyman out of Detroit.

Clark's final Writing Tool

He started a year ago, and Roy Peter Clark has now reached the 50th and final writing tool of his series. He also says he's exploring turning the whole thing into a book.

Check out No. 50 -- on the writing process overall -- and you can also find links to the other 49.

Writers talk writing

There was a National Writers Workshop in Hartford last weekend. Here's what the distinguished panel had to say.

Friedman on Albom

Jon Friedman talks about the Mitch Albom saga in Investor's Business Daily. I'm running out of steam with regard to comment on this continuing discussion, so I'll just let you be the judge.

Friedman out of bounds

"Many sportswriters are so thrilled to rub shoulders with their heroes that they present the same old, prosaic 'Gee Whiz!' story and don't go much further than giving the final score."

So says Jon Friedman in his Media Web (MarketWatch) column today. It's a throwaway sentence in a column praising Rick Reilly (not that there's anything wrong with that), and it's completely off the mark.

Every now and then, Friedman will take what I consider a big misstep when writing about sports writing; it's obvious he has some preconceived notions about the people who do it, some of which are kind of archaic.

ADDED:

I actually e-mailed Jon with my concerns, and he wrote me a nice (short) note back saying that while he understood that everybody in this business wasn't a hero-worshipper, he had known enough who were that he felt the statement was valid.

While I'd still argue that it's less true every year, I'm sure he doesn't want a penpal, so we'll leave it at that.

APSE and Albom

Saving me some compilation work, the APSE site is keeping track of ongoing events in the Mitch Albom Fallout. Check back to see what shoe drops next.

The Albom Saga

All sorts of people and places weighed in on the Mitch Albom Case this weekend. I've pretty much said my piece; one commenter below took issue with my referring to Mitch as an "extreme talent." So be it; opinions on Mitch vary wildly across the board. Let's all acknowledge that he's a highly decorated, widely read, watched and listened-to media personality, and he must have cultivated a lot of fans somewhere to achieve that status. That's why this is such a big deal; if he were a devoid-of-talent hack, nobody would care.

Anyway, rather than offer a lot of commentary, here are some of the words written about Albom's words over the weekend.

Chicago Tribune

Free Press

Free Press letters

Editor and Publisher

New York Times

Springfield News-Leader

RPC on Albom

Roy Peter Clark at Poynter writes a piece on columnists as newspapers' franchise players in a pretty spot-on commentary on the whole thing.

The Mitch Albom Mess

Ah, the perils of taking a second sick day in eight years. Not that this is directly related to my job, but work is where I tend to see stuff, so I missed a Big Story yesterday. SJ.com is certainly adequately discussing Mitch's preprint column on the Final Four -- containing a lot of references to things that should have happened and then didn't -- and they're in a frenzy at Romenesko in the letters section, too. My quick take on a horse that's already out of the barn? Mitch is an extreme talent; he also did something very wrong here. And while I don't think he should have referenced editors in his apology -- more classy had he not -- editors who read this and went to the point of letting this go out on the wire in this state, and a policy where a newspaper does preprints such as this so it can have its columnist "live" in the Sunday paper, have to bear a lot of responsibility, too. A lot of lessons to be learned about the state of modern -- well, modern a lot of things -- writing, reporting, production.

Lessons, some would say, that anybody in this business should have learned all these lessons long ago.

No, I don't think Mitch should be fired. But I'll say this -- suspending somebody whose column is only one of many outlets is kind of an empty punishment.