I am the producer for FanHouse, not one of its writers. But I'm posting now because FanHouse owes its readers an apology. Last week, we ran a blog post in this space (on the NCAA Basketball side of FanHouse) which was not up to our standards. In a poor attempt at humor, one of our writers made a disparaging remark about UCLA center Lorenzo Mata (pictured at right). Despite numerous comments on the post which complained about the author's poor choice of words, the post stayed live for three days.
After three days, the post was deleted by the author. Yesterday, I asked the author to stop writing for us.
At FanHouse, we stay true to the spirit of the blogosphere by allowing dozens of writers to post their work unedited, so long as that work stays within the bounds of good taste. The benefit of this is that we've been able to bring on dozens of writers from the 'net, pay them for their work, and build the web's most-trafficked sports blog.
But things can slip through the cracks. After corresponding with the writer of the Mata post, I have no reason to believe he intended to be hateful. But I no longer trust his judgment posting unedited work. And that means he's a bad match for FanHouse.
I am not aware of something like this ever happening before on our site, and I don't anticipate it ever happening again. We regret the mistake, and I encourage readers to drop us a line whenever they have a problem with the site, whether it's technical or editorial.
I also want to offer thanks to the commenters who responded to the post, though their comments can't be viewed on the site now that the link to the offending post is dead. (It was deleted by the author, another action which is not in line with how we do things.)
There is one comment from the deleted post which I would like to re-post. It was left by a self-described "Mata Fan," and it lays out Mata's background:
He is the child of a single parent who overcame a lot of obstacles to get admitted to UCLA. He was a guy that a lot of people (people like you) gave no chance to succeed either academically or athletically ... I am confident that he'll succeed at the next level, whether that's the NBA, pro ball overseas, or a "regular" job like the rest of us have. This guy is driven to succeed, and he has done that through hard work, not by making fun of other people.Emphasis mine. FanHouse apologizes to Mr. Mata and regrets the mistake.
