Paul Lukas's Tournament of Meat
Thanks to Eric for sending this gem from sportswriter Paul Lukas, who has been kind enough to put together a NCAA-style tournament bracket . . . of meat.
It’s a great piece, but in light of Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir’s recent book THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST it also brings up an interesting issue in terms of competitive works.
Personally, I expected a nod to Reiter and Sandomir’s book in the end note, even though I know it’s not customary for the author of an article to pimp someone else’s work. [ed. note: See below for an IMPORTANT UPDATE on this paragraph.]
Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the mock bracket (like the mockumentary or fake news) isn’t ownable. It’s an obscure form, but it’s still a form. As such, it belongs to everyone and what matters is what you do with it.
Judging from the comments so far, no one seems to care. They are simply enjoying arguing about meat and making jokes about vegetarianism.
Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson. Only a portion of your audience cares about the provenance of your work. The question then becomes whether or not that part of your audience is
1. Large
2. Influential
3. Important to your personally for whatever reason.
Final thought: I’m not in any way calling Lukas out. I’m a huge fan of his work and find him thoughtful, funny and original. Lukas’s Uniwatch blog is a model for spinning obsession into gold. Study it well.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
If you click on the comments you’ll see a note from Paul Lukas, who contacted me to inform me that he was unfamiliar with THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST.
Upon reviewing my post, I realized that I had unfairly assumed that Lukas was aware of the book and that, despite my disclaimer, I was sounding accusatory.
The original paragraph read that I “would have appreciated” a mention of the TEB. I have since changed that to “expected.” I also removed an aside about how it wouldn’t have killed Lukas or ESPN to mention the book. That wasn’t fair.
In short, apologies to Lukas. As I mentioned in an e-mail to him, if I were doing this piece for a magazine I would have called him to find out what he did or didn’t know. Just because this is the Internet doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have similar standards.
Hi, Dennis … Thanks for the shout-out. The reason I didn’t acknowledge ‘The Enlightened Bracketologist’ is simple enough: I’d never seen it or heard of it until just now. I’m sure this says more about me than it does about the book, but there you go.
If you’re at all familiar with my work, you know I always credit my sources (who are usually my readers). If you simply look at my blog, you’ll see dozens of contributors, tipsters, etc. credited in boldface type.
Cheers,
Paul
Thanks for the comment, Paul. I added a note that I hope clears things up.
This post brings up so many more issues that always rattle around in the back of my brain — i.e., I am also more casual with the blog. If everyone is also more casual online, what is happening to our news standards now-future. (Still need to read that Slate financial guy’s book, “true enough” or whatever it is. See? I’m lazy enough not to look it up.) As the business model around all this dissolves, does that eventually bring us to a “bottom,” and then what happens after that?
On the prior works issue, what is one’s responsibility? With the exponential Libraries of Congress out there, the answer to the question, “have you heard of…” increasingly is “no.” My sense is that if you’re writing about neuroscience, you need to care more than if you’re writing about meat brackets (and it might be easier because you’d think it’s a narrower field). But it seems like a vast, squishy…squishiness. I don’t quite know how to get my mind around it.
Yes, Sara, this experience has got me thinking.
When I started this project I vowed not to become the kind of lazy, snarky blogger that gives the form a bad name.
I think I’ve mostly held true to that ideal, but this post was a good reminder to stay vigilant.