Death is hard to watch — especially the kind of ghastly way the American news media continues its long, torturous goodbye.
The moribund institution of journalism suffered another cadaveric spasm this week when USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour linked Caitlin Clark’s alleged flopping for fouls to the lynching of Emmett Till.
Armour argues the Indiana Fever point guard’s whining for fouls inflames her white nationalist fans and puts the Black and queer players in the WNBA in danger.
THIS IS THE KIND of odious nonsense that passes for journalism in the 21st century: a quick, inflammatory take that is certain to make some portion of the audience angry, another portion shout with praise, all while simultaneously signaling the virtuousness of the writer or orator.
This is also the kind of thing that editors used to stop. I mean real editors, people who read copy before it was published and considered its accuracy, fairness and value to the reader.
Editors were experienced journalists who knew the community and possessed decades worth of institutional knowledge. They made tough calls based on history, ethics and the best interests of both the subjects of stories and the readers.
I believe real editors would have said no to this reckless, cruel and hyperbolic column.
But real editors are nearly extinct, and the ones who remain are so laden with the chains of corporate profit demands they can barely lift their arms, let alone make a meaningful decision.
INSTEAD OF EDITORS, the websites bearing the brands of newspapers have producers, audience growth strategists and news directors.
You might find a few editor titles on a given news website, but that’s only because the sleazy hustlers in corporate America haven’t come up with a more meaningless title.
The job of the artists formerly known as journalists is not to inform nor even entertain. It is to seek engagement.
“Engagement,” in the parlance of the news media, boils down to pageviews, paid subscriptions, and likes and shares via social media.
In the final years of my career, Des Moines Register bosses assigned reporters, columnists and other “content producers” pageview goals.
Pageview goals forced reporters to seek stories that would get the most eyeballs on the company’s website.
This shifted the focus from things that were newsworthy to things that you could easily sell.
At the end of the month, your boss sent you a list of all your published stories and what kind of engagement they received.
They were rated in baseball terminology. A story that got very few pageviews was called “a swing and a miss.” A story that went viral was a “home run” or “grand slam.”
I hated the use of baseball words to describe my columns so much that I stopped watching baseball on a regular basis for about two years at the end of my career.
No one expressly tied your performance in the monthly pageview game to your continued employment. They didn’t need to.
Between 2005 and 2020, when I was finally laid off, the Register and its owner, USA Today Co., went through layoffs at least every 18 months.
You didn’t need a doctorate in statistics to know people with hot content had a better shot at keeping their seats than those struggling to meet goals.
SO NOW WE COME to Armour’s offal stack of paragraphs directed at Clark.
It’s wrong. It’s stupid. It’s mean. And Armour has the right to say and be all those things, just as USA Today Co. has the right to publish them.
I agree, to a point.
Clark does complain too much to the referees. It’s a bad look for Clark, but it was a bad look when her dad was yelling at her to stop jawing at the refs during a 2024 NCAA Tournament game when she was still a Hawkeye.
I also agree there are some awful people who use Clark’s name, notoriety and popularity to advance their skeezy agendas.
Eleven members of Congress, including Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert demanding an investigation into hard fouls on Clark.
You live in a country where elected leaders would use a 24-year-old professional basketball player’s name as a way to signal to their racist and homophobic base that they will defend a defenseless straight, white woman from those supposed Black and queer brutes.
CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS HAVE the same problem as the legacy media: Real issues, like war and inflation, aren’t going to get people fired up nearly as much as some nonsense about basketball.
Armour’s column is no different from the letter from Congres — both grift off Clark’s name to chase pageviews, likes and shares.
To be fair, I don’t know whether Armour has a pageview goal or whether USA Today Co. uses them, but the pressure to maximize engagement never ends.
But the pressure to get noticed, liked and shared remains constant.
What would get more notice than linking the tragedy of Emmett Till to Caitlin Clark playing basketball?
Perhaps Armour is deluded enough to think using the haunting memory of Till to make a point about flopping in a basketball game will solve racism and homophobia.
LIKE ANY GOOD stump speech, there are threads of truth in her column.
I don’t doubt that there is jealousy tinged with issues of race and sexuality directed at Clark. Just as I don’t doubt there are white supremacists and world-class homophobes in Clark’s fan base.
There are dangerous creeps everywhere, even at the sports bar talking ball.
What I absolutely reject is the notion that Clark is responsible for the actions of maniacs and lunatics in her fan base.
Does Armour blame Jodie Foster for John Hinckley Jr. trying to impress her by attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan?
Does Armour blame Taylor Swift for having to carry wound-packing material because people have shown up at her house believing they were married to her?
Would Armour tell Yoko Ono that John Lennon had it coming when his “fan,” Mark David Chapman, shot and killed the former Beatles frontman outside his New York apartment in 1981?
IF WE SET UP a society where no one does or says anything because a terrible person might do something awful, we hand control over to the very fear and loathing I assume Armour abhors.
I don’t know what Clark is supposed to do. She’s a great basketball player. She’s fun to watch. Her time in the league and in the public eye should be celebratory and joyful.
And most of the time, it is.
Yet Clark’s career and the ascension of the WNBA often feel so damned miserable.
The problem isn’t Clark or anyone else in the WNBA.
She didn’t ask to be the face of the league or a media darling. She just wants to win basketball games.
Clark has condemned hate speech against anyone. She’s praised the Black women who built the league.
And she has acknowledged that growing up a white kid in Des Moines gave her privileges other kids didn’t have.
If there’s anything that’s clear about Clark, it’s that she wants to win basketball games and be spectacular while doing it.
THE PROBLEM IS GRIFTERS. People who use Clark’s back as a steppingstone to their own self-aggrandizement.
Because that’s what gets pageviews, likes and shares are all about: “Look at me. Look how awesome I am. Look at how much better I am than you.”
I won’t be calling for Armour’s firing. What’s the point? USA Today Co. will take care of that in its next round of job cuts.
But I will give credit where credit is due: The job of people calling themselves journalists today is to get attention. It doesn’t seem to matter how.
The fastest path to attention is to feed the outrage machine.
So, by that metric alone, Armour’s column did its job.
And that is the real problem.
Best yet. Keep it up.
Sad.