There was never a doubt as to who would win January’s “Article of the Month” award. This story chronicling the Manti Te’o debacle from Deadspin.com may be one of the most monumental pieces in sports writing history.
No. Not because of the subject matter. Yes, the entire ordeal was Lifetime movie-esque, but that’s not why this article deserves so much recognition. The significance in Deadspin posting this masterpiece is this:
It’s a new age in sports journalism.
No longer do you need an Ivy League journalism degree to make it as a sports writer. No longer is it necessary to read the “mainstream” sports media outlets to gain access to intellectually written, well-crafted sports columns. And no longer does “potential” have to go by the wayside due to a few unlucky breaks.
It’s a new age in sports journalism.
So thank you Deadspin for your fantastic journalism. Thank you Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey for your hours of research on a hunch. And thank you Manti Te’o for making this all possible.
Sports Righting 
Agreed. I find it fascinating how poorly the “mainstream” sports media (ESPN, Fox, NBC, CBS) are at breaking news, choosing to provide schmaltzy stories of tragedies faced, adversities overcome, and underdog tales. Sports Illustrated will break one or two stories a year, but even they have fallen off.
Meanwhile, Yahoo! and Deadspin are leading the way in investigative sports journalism, proving that some of the best reporting comes from an outfit named after a third place search engine and a site that has a PhD in snark.
No one in the mainstream press questions anything these days. The girlfriend supposedly died just days before the ND-Michigan State game in September. From that point on no one in the media questioned the story. No one in the media tried to find the girl’s family to get their reaction to her death or to find their opinion of Teo. The entire sports media fed what Teo and ND fed them and never questioned any of it. They didn’t even try to scoop each other with a family interview or anything like that. ESPN was to busy dramatizing the situation, groucing about concussions and pushing the latest Obama administration comment on sports.
Another point along the lines you mention: I’m given to understand that the National Enquirer was responsible for connecting OJ Simpson to the bloody shoe print found at his wife’s murder scene. Given the nature of Deadspin, we can see why’d they’d be very interested in being first on this story, if it was in fact correct. ESPN may have been more hestitant because it’s the kind of story that you would look extremely bad if you got it wrong.