Bob Kravitz of the Indy Star has been the flavor of the week here at TBL, and even though he addressed our questions yesterday on his radio show (and revealed his displeasure for our photo selection), he also took the time to drop us an email regarding his revelation of using off-the-record information from a Kelvin Sampson interview in a recent column. The email is after the jump.

Thanks for using the prehistoric photo. While I’ve noticed some criticism of my hair style in the comments, I’m just happy to recall the days back when I had hair.
First, on the column and the website, I just got on indystar.com, hit sports, went to columnists, clicked on my name and there it was. If it was taken down, that’s news to me. Honestly, nobody mentioned anything to me about the column until I guess it showed up on your site and maybe sportsjournalists.
As for the off-the-record issue, I would agree that OTR is OTR and there’s no statute of limitations on it. I would also say that as I looked over the column the second and third time before sending it, that particular issue did cross my mind. (I was also thinking that if I had to write one more Kelvin Sampson column, I was going to thrust an icepick into my ear). Was I betraying a confidence, or did I write around it in such a way that I was only conveying my impressions after our talk? I felt like it was the latter, but I can certainly see where intelligent people might disagree. Given a second chance at it, I’d probably write it differently, not walk quite to close to the line. It’s not like those two or three sentences made the column.
As for people saying I ought to be fired or the editor ought to be fired, well, good God, we certainly do like to eat our own, don’t we? I’m not sure this rises to the level of the Janet Cooke ruse or Jayson Blair — or even 577 impermissible phone calls to a recruit. But it’s certainly worth debating, I guess, just as long as we keep the hair comments to a minimum. I’m very sensitive.

All righty then!