Clearing the Air...

RobHowe

RobHowe

Administrator
I'd like to publicly apologize to the posters that I called out for the Martin speculation. I think part of the disconnect came from semantics.

The posters were saying OM was OK'd or "cleared", which I and some others took as him being eligible for the season, not that he only had been "Ok'd or cleared" by the NCAA and Iowa was awaiting word from the Big Ten. At the same time, my source was telling me that he was not yet eligible for the season. He or she did not tell me OM was cleared by the NCAA and final approval needed to come from Big Ten.

I should have handled things better. I shouldn't have confronted people trying to share information. I should have tried to work through with you guys sooner and maybe we would have gotten to the bottom of things soon.

Again, I apologize.

I've become hyper-sensitive to potential misinformation, in large part because of social media trolls, and to a lesser degree, trolls on here. And there were trolls on Twitter with whom I was mixing it up with on the OM story.

The journalistic landscape is ever evolving and I'm trying to evolve with it. I'll do my best to stay above the fray on these boards moving forward.

Thanks for reading.
 
Rob, from my point of view, you (or any journalist for that matter) has to be correct at least 99% of the time to stay relevant and trustworthy. So waiting for multiple sources to confirm or waiting for the official announcement is the correct thing to do. Any of us on this forum or in the twitterverse don't have nearly as much at stake other than some egg on our face if we are wrong. Many of us have egg on our face every morning anyway after our HyVee breakfast, so we are used to that.;)

Keep up the good work.
 
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Well in fairness there have been numerous claims in the past that didn’t pan out so that can cause some trepidation.

We have a tendency also to forget this is a sports forum and most of the time a lot of that includes A lOT of speculation.

No blood, no foul.
 
Trolls are like the cockroach of the internet. They can do a lot of damage, and you can never entirely get rid of them. In the meantime, they can sometimes make you do things you wouldn't otherwise do.
It makes it challenging to know who is posting "good info", like the original posters on this story, and those who aren't.
 
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Hawk1960 said:
Rob, from my point of view you (or any journalist for that matter) has to be correct at least 99% of the time to stay relevant and trustworthy. So waiting for multiple sources to confirm or waiting for the official announcement is the correct thing to do. Any of us on this forum or in the twitterverse don't have nearly as much at stake other than some egg on our face if we are wrong. Many of us have egg on our face every morning anyway after our HyVee breakfast, so we are used to that.;)

Keep up the good work.
Click to expand...

This puts Rob ahead of a good majority of today's non-sports news media.
 
RobHowe said:
I'd like to publicly apologize to the posters that I called out for the Martin speculation. I think part of the disconnect came from semantics.

The posters were saying OM was OK'd or "cleared", which I and some others took as him being eligible for the season, not that he only had been "Ok'd or cleared" by the NCAA and Iowa was awaiting word from the Big Ten. At the same time, my source was telling me that he was not yet eligible for the season. He or she did not tell me OM was cleared by the NCAA and final approval needed to come from Big Ten.

I should have handled things better. I shouldn't have confronted people trying to share information. I should have tried to work through with you guys sooner and maybe we would have gotten to the bottom of things soon.

Again, I apologize.

I've become hyper-sensitive to potential misinformation, in large part because of social media trolls, and to a lesser degree, trolls on here. And there were trolls on Twitter with whom I was mixing it up with on the OM story.

The journalistic landscape is ever evolving and I'm trying to evolve with it. I'll do my best to stay above the fray on these boards moving forward.

Thanks for reading.
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I will say that I did a poor job explaining what I had heard with my first post: "I can confirm this". What I should have said (which I said later) was that a source was told by OM that he was cleared to play. That's all I meant to say. At the time he told them, apparently, he had not been fully cleared, only cleared by the NCAA. That is information that was not known when I posted originally or until about an hour ago.
 
Ree4 said:
I will say that I did a poor job explaining what I had heard with my first post: "I can confirm this". What I should have said (which I said later) was that a source was told by OM that he was cleared to play. That's all I meant to say. At the time he told them, apparently, he had not been fully cleared, only cleared by the NCAA. That is information that was not known when I posted originally or until about an hour ago.
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That is probably due to what I said in another post. The Martin family, and probably their lawyer, got over confident after the NCAA ruling.
 
RobHowe said:
I'd like to publicly apologize to the posters that I called out for the Martin speculation. I think part of the disconnect came from semantics.

The posters were saying OM was OK'd or "cleared", which I and some others took as him being eligible for the season, not that he only had been "Ok'd or cleared" by the NCAA and Iowa was awaiting word from the Big Ten. At the same time, my source was telling me that he was not yet eligible for the season. He or she did not tell me OM was cleared by the NCAA and final approval needed to come from Big Ten.

I should have handled things better. I shouldn't have confronted people trying to share information. I should have tried to work through with you guys sooner and maybe we would have gotten to the bottom of things soon.

Again, I apologize.

I've become hyper-sensitive to potential misinformation, in large part because of social media trolls, and to a lesser degree, trolls on here. And there were trolls on Twitter with whom I was mixing it up with on the OM story.

The journalistic landscape is ever evolving and I'm trying to evolve with it. I'll do my best to stay above the fray on these boards moving forward.

Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...

Welcome to Hawkeye nation where this type of stuff tends to happen all the time. It's a message board so there shouldn't be any hard feelings, but if feelings were hurt it's because they're soft and not internet tough guys like the rest of us.
 
Jobs like Rob's can't be easy nowadays. I can't even imagine how many troll tweets/messages get thrown his way on a daily basis. It would be extremely difficult to stay above it all and not get annoyed to the point of lashing out at people that are genuinely trying to converse or relay information because one thinks its probably just another troll job.

Kudos to Rob and all on this board keeping it, for the most part, civil and entertaining the last few days. Now Saturday can't come soon enough!

Cheers!
 
RobHowe said:
I'd like to publicly apologize to the posters that I called out for the Martin speculation. I think part of the disconnect came from semantics.

The posters were saying OM was OK'd or "cleared", which I and some others took as him being eligible for the season, not that he only had been "Ok'd or cleared" by the NCAA and Iowa was awaiting word from the Big Ten. At the same time, my source was telling me that he was not yet eligible for the season. He or she did not tell me OM was cleared by the NCAA and final approval needed to come from Big Ten.

I should have handled things better. I shouldn't have confronted people trying to share information. I should have tried to work through with you guys sooner and maybe we would have gotten to the bottom of things soon.

Again, I apologize.

I've become hyper-sensitive to potential misinformation, in large part because of social media trolls, and to a lesser degree, trolls on here. And there were trolls on Twitter with whom I was mixing it up with on the OM story.

The journalistic landscape is ever evolving and I'm trying to evolve with it. I'll do my best to stay above the fray on these boards moving forward.

Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...
This is one of the reasons we love Rob. Not very many journalists would write this. Makes me want to be a better person. I'm not saying I will be, but I'll try.
 
RobHowe said:
I'd like to publicly apologize to the posters that I called out for the Martin speculation. I think part of the disconnect came from semantics.

The posters were saying OM was OK'd or "cleared", which I and some others took as him being eligible for the season, not that he only had been "Ok'd or cleared" by the NCAA and Iowa was awaiting word from the Big Ten. At the same time, my source was telling me that he was not yet eligible for the season. He or she did not tell me OM was cleared by the NCAA and final approval needed to come from Big Ten.

I should have handled things better. I shouldn't have confronted people trying to share information. I should have tried to work through with you guys sooner and maybe we would have gotten to the bottom of things soon.

Again, I apologize.

I've become hyper-sensitive to potential misinformation, in large part because of social media trolls, and to a lesser degree, trolls on here. And there were trolls on Twitter with whom I was mixing it up with on the OM story.

The journalistic landscape is ever evolving and I'm trying to evolve with it. I'll do my best to stay above the fray on these boards moving forward.

Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...

No problem on my part.
 
I think, @RobHowe , you handled it fine. Sometimes "news" breaks when it actually shouldn't. Other times, when it doesn't break, we wonder about veracity, credibility, etc. Integrity will always be paramount. Your fine in that regard!
 
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