THOROUGHBRED TIMES RIP OFF
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008I felt a little angst when a friend called Monday night to say that “someone at the Thoroughbred Times is reading the Paulick Report, because they ripped off your story about past-posting on a race from Philadelphia Park and didn’t give you any credit.”
I was in the middle of a dinner celebrating my son’s 20th birthday at the new Malone’s restaurant in the Palomar Center in Lexington (highly recommended, by the way, certainly up to the standards of all the Malone’s and with an appealing outside bar with large plasma screen TVs showing horse racing), so I didn’t get a chance to read the story until sometime later in the evening.
When I did, I was shocked and even more filled with angst when I read the article, written by the interestingly named Frank Angst, a ground soldier in the trade publication army of the Thoroughbred Times I’d crossed paths with on a number of occasions during my tenure as editor in chief of Bloodhorse.
Believe it or not, there are ethical standards among journalists, just as, I suppose, there are among horse traders. One of those standards is that publications that run exclusive stories should receive attribution or credit whenever another publication does a “cover your ass” rewrite, which is clearly what ground soldier Angst was ordered to do from on-high. To quote the leading media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN’s Reliable Sources, “Making a couple of calls to confirm a story that a journalist would not otherwise know about doesn’t excuse the obligation to give proper credit.”
Dick Jerardi, an Eclipse Award-winning writer for the Philadelphia Daily News (and an occasional Thoroughbred Times contributor), found the past-posting article of interest and wrote a story for his paper, giving attribution to the Paulick Report.
The story by Frank Angst is not the kind of journalism my old friend Mark Simon, the longtime editor of Thoroughbred Times, expected from his employees 20 years ago when he hired me as the weekly magazine’s managing editor, and I doubt that Mark’s standards have changed very much. So I sent Angst a few angry emails Monday night that he’s had plenty of time to respond to, and hasn’t. (Note to Frank: It’s 2008. If you’re not checking your inbox 24/7, you’re no damned good.)
This is the same Thoroughbred Times and same Angst that was so anxious to report my demise from Bloodhorse last August but failed to run even a brief note about the start-up of the Paulick Report a few weeks back (neither, incidentally, has the Bloodhorse, though traffic reports on the Paulick Report web site show Bloodhorse IP addresses as a frequent, daily visitor…perhaps looking for news leads?). Someone once suggested that there is something Machiavellian about the trade press, that the ends (keeping the trade publications in a cozy, friendly relationship with the industry they cover) justify the means (parsing and lifting from non-trade press). That led me to run a picture of the Italian diplomat and author Niccolo Macchiavelli, especially since Frank Angst isn’t famous enough to have a photo on the Flickr web site.
I never read The Prince, Macchiavelli’s most famous written work (I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes to say something is Macchiavellian without knowing what the hell we are talking about), but I do know something about the Thoroughbred trade press and the cozy relationship it has with advertisers and industry organizations it covers. I plead nolo contendere to charges that I was influenced at times during my 15 years at Bloodhorse, succumbing occasionally to brow-beating from advertisers, members of the organization’s board of trustees, its parent at the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, or from a publisher whose frequent jaunts to Margaritaville were made possible by a contented, free-spending group of advertisers. I’ll never forget the chilling words one of the Bloodhorse trustees said to me when I first met him: “We can’t tell you what to do or write. All we can do is fire you.”
The trade publications, for example, are not going to report on something that nearly every breeder in Central Kentucky already knows – that top older stallion Seeking the Gold has been shooting blanks this breeding season and may be finished – because 1) the farm that stands the stallion, Claiborne, is a major advertisers at Bloodhorse and Thoroughbred Times and hasn’t sent out official word yet through a press release, and 2) the stallion is controlled by Dinny Phipps chairman of the Jockey Club, and the people who run the two publications don’t want to do anything to upset Phipps since they enjoy being invited to the Jockey Club Dinner in Saratoga Springs, NY, in August.
Of course, in the Jockey Club’s Macchiavellian manner of controlling as much of the industry as possible (did I just insert Niccolo Macchiavelli again?), one of the members of the board of trustees at Bloodhorse is Bill Farish, who has a double-barrel blast of lucky sperm as the son of Jockey Club vice chairman Will Farish and son-in-law of Dinny Phipps. The chairman of the Bloodhorse board is Stuart Janney, the cousin of Dinny Phipps.
As someone once said to me, “Why should the Jockey Club buy the Bloodhorse when it already controls it?”
The lifting by the Thoroughbred Times of the Philadelphia Park story wasn’t the first time in the brief history of the Paulick Report and certainly won’t be the last time something like this happens. I’m happy to say I may even be influencing their coverage.
In the wake of our breaking story last week on the election of the Breeders’ Cup board of members and trustees, the Paulick Report headline read: CLAY CANNED IN CUP ELECTION. A short time after that story was posted, the Thoroughbred Times apparently did another hasty rewrite, but with the bland headline: BREEDERS’ CUP ELECTS 12 TO BOARD OF MEMBERS AND TRUSTEES.
Later that night, apparently someone at the Thoroughbred Times with at least marble-sized testicles changed the story headline to read: CLAY NOT AMONG 12 ELECTED TO BREEDERS’ CUP BOARD OF MEMBERS, TRUSTEES.
Bloodhorse.com apparently transitioned the other way in its brief rewrite and headline treatment. Its original headline, posted hours after the Paulick Report broke the election story, read: CLAY LOSES BREEDERS’ CUP BID. Sometime later, it was changed to the milquetoast: FOUR NOT RE-ELECTED TO CUP BOARD.
Perhaps someone thought the latter headline told the story more accurately than the former. It’s more likely that someone reminded the editorial side of Bloodhorse how much money Clay’s Three Chimneys Farm spends on advertising on its web site and magazine.
The Paulick Report will not be beholden to industry organizations like the Jockey Club or to major advertisers. We are operating on the simple premise that the Thoroughbred industry needs and deserves independent reporting and analysis. Similar to listener or viewer supported operations like National Public Radio or Public Television, we believe we will receive support from readers like you.
By Ray Paulick
Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report
CORRECTION: THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THIS STORY INCORRECTLY STATED THAT A.P. INDY "HAS BEEN SHOOTING BLANKS" DURING THE 2008 BREEDING SEASON. ACCORDING TO STATISTICS PROIDED BY WILL FARISH, A.P. INDY HAS COVERED 113 MARES AND HAS 80 OF THOSE MARES IN FOAL. THE PAULICK REPORT REGRETS THE ERROR.