Quickly following up on the outrage in Florence, South Carolina over an ESPN writer’s depiction of their city – Jeff Pearlman didn’t respond to us, but posted a note here (unedited): “I’m not saying I’m right or wrong, but here’s exactly what happened: In response to the Clayton Holmes story I received, oh, 150 or so e-mails. Most were positive, some were negative and about 15 were from Florence natives who thought I was excessively rough on the city. So I went back and re-read the story. I actually don’t think I was too hard, but I also can see it’s a part of the story that I didn’t write especially well. Hence, since it genuinely wasn’t my intent to dog all of Florence, I felt comfortable responding with a “It wasn’t my intent to rip your entire city—if it came off that way, I apologize.” Is that sorta wimpy? I guess it could be seen that way. But I don’t think anything’s wrong with a writer admitting when he’s off. It happens.

Now here’s what truly bothers me: So I send that sort of e-mail to most of the angry Florence people (90% of whom respond with a “Thanks for writing back. No big deal—just wanted to express my displeasure), and the superentendent of schools forwards my e-mail to the local paper. I was friggin’ blown away: I take the time to respond, I apologize if you took what I wrote to be a thrashing of your entire city … and you forward it to the newspaper!? Are you kidding me? (Amazingly, I spoke to the superentendent earlier today. I said, “Why would you take a private e-mail and give it to the local paper?” He said, “Well, once you sent it to me it was no longer private and I could do whatever I wanted to with it.” I said, “So, if a parent e-mails you about a student, you can forwatd that to the paper, too?”)

Then, to make matters worse, the guy who writes the story for the Florence Morning News doesn’t even call me to check the facts of his piece (some of which were off). It was insane: You write a story about someone … and you don’t even call him? To check facts? To make sure the e-mails were legit? Etc?

Anyhow, the writer later apologized to me, which was cool. I think he was young and learning and whatever. We all make mistakes …

Anyhow, the experience wasn’t a fun one. I try to write every person back when they send an e-mail. This time it didn’t work out.”

Pearlman screwed up responding to these clowns, the Super screwed up by passing along an email exchange, and the reporter screwed up by not even calling Pearlman to ask for his side in the story. Everybody wins!