ooooooh, Tennis magazine got

BUSTED!

See those 200+ comments on the tennis.com blogs? All intern comments.

ooooooh Tennis magazine in troubuuuuule (as in Tootie trouble).

Here’s me, acting surprised:

I’ve posted on Bodo’s blog a few times and once had my post deleted without cause or explanation. They’re obviously trying to present a certain agenda. Stupid, I know, but so is this intern business.

Anyway, are we sure this intern isn’t looking for a job at The Times?

i totally swear i’m not one of Lynn’s numerous interns. for real. no really.

I’m not one of Lynn’s interns either (all the way in the Netherlands, how believable is that!), but I do want
to say thank you for these great finds again today, yay!
That Shark article, man , I feel for Andy. It sounds though like she wore the pants, doesn’t it, and now she
wants to be dominated for a change?! (”Andy is the kind of guy who used to cry when he talked about her.”
)
Anastasia Myskina’s tv career cute, but I do hope to see her back on the courts. Women and football and
presenting in one combination is still not excepted here..
Via bugmenot.com I get access now to the NYT articles

I actually AM one of Lynn’s interns. I am being paid to write all my comments either in cookies or sexual favors, and only one of them are worth it. I’ll never tell for certain, except to say that I really do like Oreo’s a whole lot!!

Here’s my question: Don’t you wait until the internship is OVER before you tip off the papers? At least use a fake name Internboy.

Clearly you’ve all earned your internship …cookies.

dude people are rippin your shit off. i just saw this on aol!!!

i bet those tennis mag people are mighty po’ed at you.

Mad at Lynn? WTF for? She didn’t tell the interns to comment spam anyone.

You know it’s a rainy tennis day when there are three pictures of Robredo in the news feed.

For fun, I just went and checked out Tennis mag to see if they were going to talk about this at all. There are a bunch of comments on Bodo’s blog, and most of the commenters seemed to think that this kid was just stupid. One woman was interested in having a conversation about journalism and ethics but no one seemed interested.

PB did a nice job refuting the story, but his assistant “Steggy” said

First, I’m shocked that Off the Baseline would even relay this kind of rumor mill crap. Normally, that site is spot-on and avoids gossip of that nature. However, I’m willing to call it a misguided fluke.

I’m a little unclear where this is “rumor mill crap”, but OK.

Then she (I think it’s a she anyway) went on to say:

Bear in mind I obessively (sic) checked IP addresses on everyone, going so far as to log them per nickname/handle and person, for the better part of two years. I knew your work IP from your home IP. That was my job when the faux-people came around, you see — to make sure that you were indeed posting as yourself, and thus your nickname was safe from troll abuse.

This isn’t directly related to the intern thing, but that is just down-right scary! I’m not sure that really helps their case that TM is on the up and up either.

I also think the intern’s candidates are Kelly and Joe of the “Ready, Set Goal” blogs. Just a hunch.

Well Jill, yes, this wasn’t really “gossip”, but I’m going to focus on the compliment piece of that.

Basically, I heard that wrt to Bodo’s blog they had a terrible time when they first launched with people faux posting comments. I chalked it all off to a new institutional blog not having the right technological knowledge on how to deal. You’re right that that didn’t sound very good though.

Your previous statement about post deletion, which I’ve also heard about from others, does speak to a certain amount of “editorial structure”. I don’t know if that’s still the case and I don’t know too much about it other than that, though there does seem to be a whole lot of angst against them.

And AFAIK Steggy is a woman.

Ben: It’s cool. I’m used to getting ripped off and having people mad at me.

OMFG!!! After reading the comments here, I went over to Tennis.com to see what was going on. The users in their blog — and the editorial staff — are TOTALLY trashing you Lynn.

I guess we should be surprised that their interns were asked to do unethical things and that they track IP addresses?!!?

I’m mortified. Simply. mortified.

As someone who posts on Tennis.com regularly trust me when I say this, we’re pretty much laughing at the so called bruhaha the article has caused. It’s not so much about the content of the article, it’s the silly responses that have been generated from others from “other” sites. Such as posting inflammatory, flame worthy posts over at TW to incite a response. Sorry, it reeks of jealousy to me. As for the “intern” it’s been shown that he didn’t even post of Bodo’s or Tignor’s blogs. So much ado about nothing, right?

As far as the moderating of posts, it’s true that they run a tight ship over there and I appreciate it. Otherwise, TW would be another version of the ESPN boards. What’s so wrong about having a place where knowledgeable and intelligent fans can discuss their favorite sport and it’s players without having to deal with trolls?

Take it from me, a chick who has never interned anywhere..TW posters are the real deal- the real passionate, Kool-Aid drinking, sarcastic deal that is. If it’s not someone’s cup of tea, oh well so be it. There are other places to cause trouble.

BTW, I do like OTB as well. It’s a good place for gossip.

Cheers!

“I’m mortified. Simply. mortified”

Don’t be silly. I mean, WHAT? C’mon.

What’s wrong with editing trolls? And tracking IP adresses? They do that in every decent place over the net. So that the moderators can ban the persistent trolls for good basically.

No need to be mortified. TW isn’t going to eat you alive. Come on over and see yourself, instead of making silly comments like that. You’ll see no one is being payed for posting comments. Ahhh sheesh how silly.

I don’t usually post things on message boards or blogs but I have been following this for the past couple days here and at TW and Veruca Salt, what you are saying doesn’t make any sense to me, “It’s not so much about the content of the article, it’s the silly responses that have been generated from others from “other” sites. Such as posting inflammatory, flame worthy posts over at TW to incite a response. Sorry, it reeks of jealousy to me.”

Are you accusing the OTB people of posting things?? I read what was written at TW and it also looks to me like the TW people are trashing OTB.

For my vantage point OTB didn’t accuse the TW blog of anything. They are saying Tennis Mag did something wrong as proven in the New York Times. It seems to me that the Tennis Magazine editor should make a statement on the main part of their website apologizing and acknowledging it – not saying mean things about a website that drew attention to their flaws in one of their blogs. That is further proof of highly irresponsible journalism on the magazine’s part.

I like OTB and read it almost every day too. I’m sure the people at TW are cool, but this whole thing is turning me off to both Tennis Magazine and TW.

I like Veruca Salt too. The band more than the Willy Wonka character.

Hey ancicfan,

I’ve read posts from both sites and it’s just my perception that the initial report was greeted with gleeful delight. I also read some of the posts (before they were deleted) and yes they were posted in order to generate the responses you just mentioned from the readers at TW. Sorry if it doesn’t make much sense to you. I’ve heard that often about my writings, no biggie. I call ‘em as I see ‘em. If you check again, Kamikashi has done just what you asked.

So it’s out. It’s been corrected and it’s time to move on.

ancicfan:

I think a professional courtesy would be to ask instead of insinuate. Apparently, this has nothing to do with PB’s blog, as Pete has said himself, or don’t you believe him? Do you think OTB has any journalistic responsibility to post more than they did, now that there have been responses? I think so.
Pete and Kamakshi came out and addressed it, and have made themselves available for inquiry, it’s time for others to be responsible as well. Until then, I’m going to believe that OTB is fanning flames where it suits them.

And lastly, I think the NYT has done shoddy work for several years now…don’t get me started on them! It pays to do a double check!

Fair enough, I think.

“professional courtesy?” thats rich. are on the job? look i dont think anyone should blame the times here for something tennis magazine messed up. i also think it is strange that a website needs a full time person checking IPs but ok. another thing is that i looked at the website and didn’t see anything about it. is it hidden somewhere??? knowing my IP is logged i cloaked myself but will not be going back. that is for sure.

wow. i am more amused at the backlash then i was originally by the intern story. When we are salivating over a story here about which tennis player went home with which golf player, that’s gossip. When OTB links a story published by an established paper calling out a Tennis site for fluffing their blog comments it’s NOT gossip. It may very well be information relevant to OTB readers.

Now if a photo of the intern’s blue dress showed up here, that might be crossing the line, but until that happens, I am going to continue laughing at how upset someone who comments at TW can be about this site linking to the NYT story. Hilarious.

Meanwhile, i am STILL not one of Lynn’s interns and she has NEVER asked me to do anything ethically or sexually inappropriate.

Wow. This blog has some serious envy going on for TW, in my opinion. That’s really a shame to see. But Ok. I came here and thought I’d have a look see, and maybe find some thoughtful, fair minded people here, but this is just an “us against them mentality”.

Not interested.

From my vantage point I see that the Bodo/Tennis people are embarrassed and it seems that they’re taking it out on Lynn and OTB. If you Google this’ you will see that it’s been talked about at the Huffington Post, Poynter, AOL Sports Blogs, Joop, and quite a few others. This is schoolyard politics — no one in their right mind at Tennis is going to go after HuffPost!

I, for one, appreciate some of the Bodo folks coming over and posting and trying to smooth things over, but for every one of them (3) there seems to be 10 that are railing against my poor friend Lynn. In all honesty, the more I read about the way that Tennis conducts themselves offline as well as online, the less interested I am in joining the community there. For ex I took a brief look at the site earlier today and saw a post by a “moderator” telling people to change the subject.

All I know is that this would NEVER happen here and I am SO glad. Tennis has egg on their faces and they’re blaming someone smart enough to have figured it out. Suck it up.

Tari, what exactly is the point of your post? You’re trying to stir the pot of course.

From the intern

“I’ve been trying to keep my head about the aftermath of the Ethicist column that ran in Sunday’s NYT. I certainly didn’t anticipate such reaction, but have also learned a great deal through the process. And what is life without character-building learning experiences? I will say this over and over again: TENNIS Magazine is a clean, professional and dignified publication – both online and in print. No ifs, ands or buts about it. I wrote that letter months ago, and the editor in question has since left for unrelated resasons.”

http://tennischatter.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the quote, anon. It’s good to know this kid has a future as a copy editor.

Look folks, my post had zero to do with Peter Bodo’s blog. This was about something published in the NYT about Tennis Magazine. As my defense counsel Claireg notes, I’m not the only one who wrote about this but for whatever reason this went Defcon-5.

On behalf of all my “interns”, I want to personally thank all of Bodo’s TennisWorld readers who stopped by. I hope you enjoy OTB and continue reading it.

Now let’s get back to talking about tennis, shall we?

Not to beat a dead horse or anything but I used to post over at TW but after engaging in tiring arguments with Bodo over idelogical differences, I stopped. So I was really really surprised when I went there and found somebody posting under my old username, even going so far as to emulate my tone. Creeped me out.

I’m still livid that Lynn was able to overlook this, but I don’t think she took the time to see what vicious things they were saying. She’s a bigger woman than I am.

IMHO that blog is chock full of idiot idol-worshippers and Tennis mag is run by cowards who deserved to be called out for it.

I can’t say I’m surprised by your experience KL. If you look at some of the tennis forums it seems to be common.