The worst story I ever wrote
Tom Brady's GOAT moment played a role in my worst story. A reporter can never turn their brain off.
I should have called in sick.
With a 6AM start on the breaking news desk, and the Super Bowl running late, normally I would have. Back at it Tuesday.
But Tom Brady had just won his fifth Super Bowl. He overcame a 28-3 deficit to win the first Super Bowl to reach overtime, 34-28. Brady was officially the Greatest of All Time, the GOAT. And we were all witnesses.
If Brady could win five Super Bowls, surely I could work a five-day week, I told myself. I answered the alarm and showed up. What Would Brady Do? That.
Soon enough, my breaking news editor had a tip. My boss’s boss’s hairdresser claimed to know a local man who won $1 million betting on the Super Bowl.
I’m always wary of thirdhand tips, offered by editors who are sitting at home. No journalist is more eager to pass on a tip or forward an email than one who knows they don’t have to do the work.
But a “tip” from your boss, or your boss’s boss, is actually an assignment. Even if it comes by way of her hairdresser.
If there were any objections, I raised none. My editor said it was a “cute” story. If I got on it fast, it could be a quick story.
Besides, we had social proof: A Detroit TV news station had done a story on the winning bet.
I reached out the winning bettor, and quickly got an interview.
Awesome. Mission accomplished. Now we can move on. And so the worst story I ever wrote, “Royal Oak man wins $1 million in Super Bowl bet,” was “confirmed.”
Then I heard back from the betting site itself, and other players in the league. What I learned in those interviews was disturbing.
The company only had 3,000 to 4,000 users, mostly from outside of Michigan.
How, then, was it that the winning bettor and the company founder hailed from the same area, Rochester?
And how could a company with such a modest user base afford that big a payout?
What was presented as a “winning Super Bowl bet” was actually the unlikeliest streak of luck in human history.
It required 81 of 81 successful bets throughout the season. Not only that, but because there was a three-point spread, if the Patriots had won by a field goal, the winner would get nothing.
“A push is as good as a loss,” explained one member of the betting league.
Not even the sharpest of sharp gamblers in Las Vegas reach perfection. And if they did, they’d win a lot more than $1 million.
Every detail smelled fishy. And the more I learned, the fishier it got. I was buried under my own reporting. What went wrong that day was the order of operations: Ready, fire, aim.
Had I gathered these interviews before we published, I could make the case that we shouldn’t.
Had I found the Sept. 2016 press release, announcing that it would take a perfect season to win the $1 million, we probably would’ve backed away. We would’ve known that the “winning Super Bowl bet” was not as presented.
But “get something up,” the mantra of the breaking news, gave us permission to press publish ASAP.
Five years later, after the moonshot “$1 million win” that was supposed to drive interest, the app in question has less than 900 Facebook followers, and hasn’t posted on its page since 2020.
The stunt failed.
But so did I.
In the rush to get the story up quick, and please the boss, and be done, I failed to ask important questions, like: Does any of this make sense? Doesn’t this sound too good to be true?
By the time I had enough material to question the narrative, the story was up, and the damage was done. Ready-fire-aim worked, until it didn’t.
Journalism is a team sport. Failures are team failures. But the person with the byline has a special duty to the reader, which I failed in that day.
A reporter can never turn their brain off.