Too Late.

Yesterday I wrote about the outing of a trans-person by Grantland that may have resulted in her suicide, the Grantland Editor has now apologized…

We started hearing that question on Friday afternoon, West Coast time, right as everyone was leaving our Los Angeles office to start the weekend. We kept hearing that question on Friday night, and all day Saturday, and Sunday, too. We heard it repeatedly on Twitter and Facebook. We sifted through dozens of outraged emails from our readers. We read critiques on various blogs and message boards, an onslaught that kept coming and coming. I don’t remember the exact moment when I realized that we definitely screwed up, but it happened sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. On Sunday, ESPN apologized on our behalf. I am apologizing on our behalf right now. My condolences to Dr. V’s friends and family for any pain our mistakes may have caused.

She is dead and no amount of apologizing will bring her back.

There is a responsibility to be culturally aware of the environment that you are writing about. Whether it is the black culture or Latino culture or the trans-culture you should know how what you write will affect not only who you are writing about but also how it will affect others in that community. Will they not even consider what you are writing about an issue? Or will what you write be considered an insult to the community? Some religions consider it an insult to write about their god in anything but positive light. The article goes on to say that,

The fourth issue, and this almost goes without saying: Not only did we feel terrible about what happened to Dr. V, we could never really know why it happened. Nor was there any way to find out.

Yes there was a way, ask. Pick up the phone and call a transgender organization or call GLAAD; you are a reporter and it is your job to ask questions. Which they realized in hindsight,

…Whether you believe we were right or wrong, let’s at least agree that we made an indefensible mistake not to solicit input from ANYONE in the trans community. But even now, it’s hard for me to accept that Dr. V’s transgender status wasn’t part of this story…

They go on to say that it was part of the story,

…Caleb couldn’t find out anything about her pre-2001 background for a very specific reason. Let’s say we omitted that reason or wrote around it, then that reason emerged after we posted the piece. What then?

What then was to ask yourself was the reason justified? Did she really have the degrees only in her male name, if that was the case it would not been news worthy because she had the degrees that she claimed to have had. If she didn’t have the degrees than that would have been the salient fact, not that she was trans.

To my infinite regret, we never asked anyone knowledgeable enough about transgender issues to help us either (a) improve the piece, or (b) realize that we shouldn’t run it. That’s our mistake — and really, my mistake, since it’s my site. So I want to apologize. I failed.

More importantly, I realized over the weekend that I didn’t know nearly enough about the transgender community – and neither does my staff. I read Caleb’s piece a certain way because of my own experiences in life. That’s not an acceptable excuse; it’s just what happened. And it’s what happened to Caleb, and everyone on my staff, and everyone who read/praised/shared that piece during that 56-hour stretch from Wednesday to Friday.