Nothing like a little hindsight to make us all feel like idiots on the Manti Te’o story. You would almost think this is journalism’s darkest hour since Janet Cooke won the Pulitzer.

More piling on:

Ronnie Ramos of the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana:

It has become apparent in the past year that as mainstream media and journalists work online and across social media platforms, they have not brought with them the same accountability and transparency they demonstrated when they worked  for newspapers.

(Later he wrote) One of the outcomes of this Te’o hoax should be an in-depth review of how stories are vetted and a constant standard established for each organization across all platforms. We saw last year that lax standards for Twitter contributed to the false report about former Penn State coach Joe Paterno’s  death.

Patrick Hruby in The Atlantic:

The Te’o debacle isn’t like crediting the wrong player with a touchdown catch, or reporting an anonymously-sourced trade rumor that turns out to be false. This is a journalistic failure of the highest order, on a systemic scale, and frankly, there ought to be some sort of independent commission established to get to the bottom of how so many different organizations could be so very, very wrong about something so very, very basic.

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And there were readers weighing in with comments on my site:

Barry: Not one reporter thought to contact the Stanford sports information director’s office on the outside chance of getting an interview with the “girlfriend’s” roommate, parents, a teacher, SOMEBODY, anybody that knew her personally?

Doing so more than likely would’ve revealed that the girl DIDN’T GO TO STANFORD! After which it likely would’ve been determined that SHE DIDN’T EXIST!

Might not be a bad idea for sportswriters to work the police and/or political beats for awhile before they migrate into the toy department. That way, they might be able to tell more easily when someone’s story sounds fishy.

Derek: Yes, a story should be verified before you run with it.  Journalists like to hold themselves and their profession in high regard, but when they fail to display even a shred of the intellectual integrity necessary to the pursuit of truth, and act with the unquestioning credulity of the proverbial choir member, things like this, which make the entire profession seem indistinguishable from the much-maligned, amateur blogosphere, are bound to occur.

Because no one at SI, ESPN, or any other outlet felt it necessary to scratch beneath the surface of a good story, the entire media is now being forced to absorb yet another black eye to its already battered reputation.

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And finally, Deadspin editor Tommy Craggs offered this assessment in his interview with Poytner:

I have less sympathy for the folks who crafted those painstaking “Love Story”-in-cleats feature stories about Manti and his dead girlfriend. Those were dumb, infantilizing stories to begin with, and they were executed poorly and sloppily, and if there’s any lesson to be drawn from this, it’s that this kind of simpering crap should be eliminated from the sports pages entirely.

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As I posted yesterday, I have a hard time blaming the reporters who covered the story and wrote about Te’o’s girlfriend. Why wouldn’t you believe Te’o? Why wouldn’t you believe Notre Dame? Brian Kelly made a spectacle out of giving him the game ball after the Michigan game.

Perhaps, reporters should have dug deeper to find out about the deceased girlfriend. To add details of who she was to the narrative. However, I don’t think it was imperative, considering what Te’o said about her.

It’s all hindsight. And don’t forget the media now works in a world where the deadline was five minutes ago. It does put a premium on going with what you’ve got now.

Obviously, the lesson here is the age-old notion of making that extra phone call. Easier to say now than prior to Deadspin publishing its story.

And speaking of Deadspin, the writers don’t get that story without receiving a tip. Otherwise, they had no reason to believe Te’o’s girlfriend was make-believe.

Deadspin did a superb job of running with what they got. It was a good day in journalism for them.

However, to condemn everyone else isn’t fair. The reporters who worked on this story didn’t have the benefit of hindsight.