From The Editorial Team at Dodgers Nation: An Acknowledgment, and a Commitment To Grow
An often-repeated parable from the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona involves the role of wind in the formation of trees. The Biosphere – a giant dome in the Arizona desert designed to replicate Earth’s natural environments – held many of the same weather conditions found in nature: rain, sunlight, etc. It could not, or did not, replicate wind.
The trees inside Biosphere 2 grew more rapidly than they did outside of the dome, but they also fell over before reaching maturation. After looking at the root systems and outer layers of bark, it was determined the lack of wind caused a deficiency of stress wood. Stress wood develops when small cracks are formed in a tree’s wood when put under stress, usually from wind. It helps the tree grow towards the light and to strengthen it.
At Dodgers Nation, we don’t want to seal ourselves off from criticism – or exposure to criticism. We want to report the news, not just aggregate it. That necessarily invites risks, like getting a story wrong the first time. We accept criticism when that happens. It can only help us grow.
On Friday, we reported Shohei Ohtani had decided to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only were we confident in the information based on the quality of our sourcing, we received no contradictory information from those sources (or others) over the next 24 hours, until Ohtani announced on his Instagram account that he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
We know some of what changed in the span of one day. Following our initial report, the Dodgers made one last offer to Ohtani representing a significant increase from their previous offer. Ohtani formally accepted that offer after the Friday night meeting. In some corners of the front offices in Toronto and Los Angeles, the expected outcome of the biggest free-agent pursuit in baseball history shifted 180 degrees.
We also know we were the first to report on Ohtani’s decision, willing to accept backlash in the event he changed his mind. News of that magnitude can affect everything from algorithm-based ticket prices to human-based television programming decisions to fan sentiment. In this case, it did all of the above. The second-to-last thing any media outlet wants to do is become part of a story.
The last thing any media outlet wants to do is mischaracterize accurate information to the point of inaccuracy. Dodgers Nation acknowledges the impact our report had on people’s lives. Even as we reminded readers a contract was far from official, it was easy to connect the dots from a decision to a done deal.
Our process for reporting news large and small remains steadfast. We intend to verify and report responsibly sourced information, like the Ohtani story, as we get it. To withhold that information is less ethical than reporting it, even when it invites criticism. We will stand by the accuracy of our reporting with as much transparency as possible, learn from our mistakes, and weather whatever criticism comes our way. It can only make us stronger.
Update: 12/12/23
An apology. This is not a drill: pic.twitter.com/VTvcofuiYY
— J.P. Hoornstra (@jphoornstra) December 12, 2023
Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
OK. Glad to read this.
Thanks for this. Appreciate it and rock on!
You guys can be honest. You wanted to be first even at the expense of being wrong. You succeeded.
Congratulations. You wanted to be first, you wanted to be famous. It worked! You’ve arrived! JP Hoornstra will forever be known as the guy who jumped the gun on the Ohtani sweepstakes.
Keep working hard, keep polishing your craft, but do know that *nothing* you do from this day forward will change your professional epitaph.
It’s all downhill from here, enjoy the rest of your career being an inside-baseball trivia answer. Chin up, most never get that far. Cheers.
I think this is a little HARSH. His career IS NOT ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE. No writer’s is. Yes they got it wrong at first but the situation was very fluid. If you are going to blame someone, blame Friedman for keeping his cards so close to his vest. He’s a hard person to read and no one…not even him, was sure of what was happening. Ohtani is a VERY private person which did not help the situation either, They could of said its down to the Blue Jays or Dodgers and made life a little easier for every body but they didn’t so Hoornstra made a decision on what he had, which turned out to be incorrect but not damming, They rolled it back, unlike the national news media who make claims about the body politic or the economy or current events, etc, and let it stand no matter how foolish or wrong or one sided it is, which is most of the time. National News reporting has gone from reporting to throwing opinions on the water and seeing what sticks. I prefer the former. I don’t need some one to tell me what to believe. I want the facts and I will make my own decision, thank you.
I give the Dodger Nation staff credit for trying to get it right when sometimes the facts make that impossible. More power to them . This was an extraordinary event. They did the best they could with the facts they had as Doug McKain so eloquently explained the other day in Dodger Dugout and sometimes they have to take one for the team. We should thank them for their honesty, Not damn them for the occasional slip up.
Congratulations. You wanted to be first, you wanted to be famous. It worked! You’ve arrived! JP Hoornstra will forever be known as the guy who jumped the gun on the Ohtani sweepstakes.
Keep working hard, keep polishing your craft, but do know that *nothing* you do from this day forward will change your professional epitaph.
It’s all downhill from here, enjoy the rest of your career being an inside-baseball trivia answer. Chin up, most never get that far. Cheers.
You should be ashamed. Shoddy journalism. Resign!!
Agree! You didn’t see ESPN or Toronto News groups reporting. Something that big should have been right the first time! You sent Dodger fans in a tailspin when you reported that Toronto got the contract. Not Good!
Next time, like the rest of us, just wait for the principals to let us know an report that. Shohai wanted to break the final decision, which he did, then report that. It is 2023 not 1966.
Well done JP. No worries from me. You haven’t lost any credibility in my eyes. Things happen that are totally out of our control. You guys are great at DN and i’ll continue to watch and read all you do. i’m sure I can speak for most of your subscribers.
An acknowledgement is not the same as an apology.
“We made an error in not only the report itself, but also in judgement—by running the story in the first place. To our readers, to Shohei Ohtani, and to the game itself, we are sorry. We will strive to be better in the future, to report with integrity, and to learn from the mistakes we surely will make.”
That’s an apology. It’s not that hard.
Well said
I kind of feel like you guys are still lying. I don’t believe he had decided on Toronto, and then LA made some huge late offer and he changed his mind. That sounds like you guys making stuff up in order to appear not so wrong. I could believe that maybe he was leaning to Toronto, and you guys jumped the gun, but that’s not what you’re saying now. You are still actually doubling down on your original report (essentially saying you were right at the time). I don’t buy it and will likely not read your site much anymore because of it.
Well said!
You won the John Heyman award for premature reporting. Accept the award graciously and never, never be so irresponsible in the future.
Get ready, dodger fans to pay more money for everything I’m glad the Dodgers got this guy but he’s not gonna be able to do too much for the first year and we’ll see how productive he is after that. For someone to be paid $190,000 a day for the next 10 years these contracts are getting way out of control and like the same goals if someone’s willing to pay it they’re going to do it so hopefully this works out for the Dodgers in the long run. We’ll see how many championships he could bring go Dodgers
He is still going to hit in 2024 and last year while pitching he was one of the best hitters in the league. Now he’ll be focused solely on hitting…I won’t be shocked if he hits 60 homers next year. And by all accounts there is significant amount of deferred money so he won’t be making that much over 10 years.
This whole Shohei situation has been a mess and I don’t (as yet) believe he is worth the money. I’d have preferred Yamamoto, Corbin Burns, Dylan Cease, Bellinger and Nolan Arenado for that price (plus some trades). Ohtani in Toronto would have been a gift, I wish your bogus report would have held up. Oh yeah almost forgot Fire Doc!
BELLINGER IS NOT COMING BACK. My god, way too many Dodger fans need to get that through your heads. Bellinger and Seager are gone, get over it already. Also, Arenado isn’t even on the trade block. Burnes is no longer on the trade block. And the White Sox have pulled Cease back from the trade block and are waiting to move him. So basically you want something that isn’t even possible instead of what the Dodgers now have. And people wonder why Dodger fans are called delusional…
Fake news media never apologizes. JP…unless you can come clean on this you will suffer the consequences of being considered fake news every time your name appears on an article.
Dewey Defeats Truman! November 1948
DISCLOSE the source.
I’m glad to see some level of awareness and recognition that the DN Ohtani to Toronto story had some negative impacts on people’s lives. I agree with other commenters here that the article is a doubling down and a defense of the initial reporting. The closest thing to accountability is this “We want to report the news, not just aggregate it. That necessarily invites risks, like getting a story wrong the first time”. This line is part of the Biosphere portion of the article and precedes the discussion of the actual Ohtani to Toronto reporting. The “getting the story wrong” part isn’t specifically about that specific problematic reporting in so much as it is saying getting stuff wrong comes with the territory of reporting news rather than aggregating it.
From what I can tell, Hoornstra’s argument is:1) We were confident in the multiple sources and information. The sources didn’t object to what was written. 2) Individuals in BOTH Toronto and LA’s front offices thought Ohtani was going to Toronto until he abruptly changed his mind. 3) During the time between the first reporting and Ohtani’s announcement the Dodgers made a substantively different offer. 4) There is no problem with the reporting process. It “remains steadfast”. I believe this means that if they had it to do over again they would report the same way. Hoornstra does say we want to “learn from our mistakes” yet no mistake is acknowledged.
The article implied that the reporting relied on sources from within both the Toronto and Los Angeles front offices who were in a position to know Ohtani’s decision yet to my knowledge no other reporters whether national or from either beat could corroborate what Hoonstra wrote in the many hours after the story ran . The explanation is that Ohtani did a 180 degree turn, plausibly this was related to the new offer, yet Hoornstra is on an island in his reporting. No other journalists that I am aware of have independently sourced the key points of Hoornstra’s narrative. If I’m wrong, I’d like to know, if other journalists are corroborating it changes everything.
you’re an idiot it was refuted by lots of people that day. Stop making up excuses and take responsibility no one should ever take you serious again if they ever did in the first place which i doubt
Definitely a no apology “apology” here. Years ago, I worked for a big city newspaper that decided to run no corrections because it “would cause readers to question the accuracy of our stories.” Fair enough. Maybe the Dodgers did increase their offer at the last minute. But if everyone else is reporting something else, there is always a chance that you may be just wrong. Time to move on to the next story. At best, you got played. It happens.
You should be credited for owning the mistake.
I recall a time a few years ago when people were insisting that schools needed to arrange vaccinations for their workers, and needed to do so RAPIDLY, even though no vaccines had been delivered to any local health departments. To this day, the people making those claims have yet to own their blatantly incorrect statements.
You have owned yours. Bravo.
I am a former sports journalist – I left that business in 2012. I feel like I still know a few things, though. I challenge anyone to find anywhere in your initial report in which you “reminded readers that a contract was far from official.” You reported the Blue Jays contract as basically a done deal – “Shohei Ohtani is signing with the Blue Jays” – which was to be formally announced within hours, essentially. There is no indication anywhere in the piece that he might still, for example, change his mind. Maybe that’s what happened, and your reporting in the moment was accurate, such as it was. But it is “gas lighting” to write now that the original story contained any kind of qualifier or caveat. It did not.
Totally agree. This site is not worthy of any Dodgers fans using it to gain knowledge ever again. And trying to walk away from owning their poor reporting with excuses now. I won’t rely on them ever again.
You did not own this huge mistake. Every Dodger’s fan expects a site with Dodgers in the name to be right about news on the Dodgers. You make up excuses about changing his mind, and 180 degree change to the situation. You are not worthy of having any Dodger fan read or rely on Dodger’s information. Shut down please.
As a news organization, the one thing that you are compelled to do is get the information you report RIGHT. You did NOT accomplish the number 1 responsibility. And certainly should NOT say after you have made a false report that we had to report or it would have been unethical or problematic in some way. Craziness.
We, as sports fans, have a tendency to take the game too seriously. JP Hoornstra’s reporting the signing of Ohtani to the Jays was, in fact, too early, but he was only one many sports writers across the nation that did the same thing. In this age of egos and arrogance, I appreciate the way JP owned the fact that he made a mistake. Reporters constantly make mistakes on stories that really matter. We cannot cry because of a baseball reporter’s mistake. Remember “there is no crying in baseball”.