Either that or longtime Observer sports reporter Stan Olson doubled back to edit himself on his final blog post yesterday afternoon.
The original version of Olson’s post, recovered via Bing cache:
Olson: I’ve been decommitted by the Big O
Good afternoon and goodbye.
Although my College Recruiting blog has consistently recorded some of the highest web hit totals at The Observer, the economy has made more cuts at the newspaper necessary, and the knife got me last week. It felt more like a two-by-four, and came as a total surprise after almost four decades at the paper.
This is a McClatchy-wide thing, as the company tries to pay down debt. My editors were all very supportive and disappointed at my departure, and we part as friends.
I won’t say I’m happy about it, obviously.
I was already working half-time, and loving all of this recruiting noise.
And I think I’ll miss the Tar Heels fans the most—while I criticized their class, in-state and out, they were right that Butch Davis would finish strong—he and his staff are killing it today, and I’d like to be available for my verbal whipping.
Anyway, take care, send all your tips to Ken Tysiac, who is a great guy and a talented writer, and I’ll be around.
And now the edited version, which omits any reference to McClatchy:
This is my last post, because of staff reductions at The Observer.
I think I’ll miss the Tar Heels fans the most—while I criticized their class, in-state and out, they were right that Butch Davis would finish strong—he and his staff are killing it today, and I’d like to be available for my verbal whipping.
Anyway, take care, send all your tips to Ken Tysiac, who is a great guy and a talented writer, and I’ll be around.
So a pretty funny hed and four graphs down to one line. And those four graphs were informative statements of fact, not sour grapes. If Olson was edited from on high, I don’t so much feel bad for him, but for UPoR readers. They deserve better. They deserve to be treated like adults, like paying customers you respect instead of little children. A couple commenters on the blog noticed the change immediately, but they evidently do not rate an explanation from the UPoR brass. Still, one of them posted the original at 9:30 am this morning.
Wonder how long it stays up.
At any rate, Olson was a decent reporter, if far too trusting of the spin coming out of our local sports powerbrokers. And he did have that one memorable brain-fart a year ago, forgetting that Antawn Jamison played at Providence High School. Still, he will be missed. Here’s hoping Olson winds up taking airtime away from some of the duds WFNZ has on the air.
Update: Sure enough, the 9:30am — 9:29 IIRC — post with Olson’s original has been sent down the memory hole. No sign that it was even there. Just zap. Gone. The idiocy and arrogance is really quite stunning.
Update II: Romenesko — Poynter Online — has picked up on the incident.
