Mitch Albom is apparently about to be fired from the Detroit Free Press, over a lapse in judgment in which he fabricated a line in a column last week. In a column written Friday and published Sunday, Albom wrote in the past tense that former Michigan State basketball players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson had attended a Final Four game and sat together (they had planned to and told Albom so, but didn't).
It was a stupid thing to do, no doubt, but I don't think it should be a firing offense for my fellow former Brandeis journalism graduate. He didn't make something up out of whole cloth, Jayson Blair-like; he merely fudged past and future tense. Whatever happens, Albom's got highly lucrative second and third careers- as a radio host and author of hyper-earnest mega-bestsellers- to fall back on.
Posted by Stephen Silver at April 12, 2005 12:44 AM