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Glenn Bunting's piece in the L.A. Times magazine on sports writer Frank Deford's journalistic mistakes certainly elicited a bunch of response. On Saturday, the Times corrections page offered some response of its own. It acknowledged that Bunting flubbed a couple of balls himself:
A Jan. 11 Los Angeles Times Magazine article on writer Frank Deford incorrectly stated that he collaborated on books with five professional tennis players. In fact, Deford wrote "Big Bill Tilden" in 1975 on his own. The article also referred to Robert Victor Sullivan as a Mississippi prep football coach. He was a junior college football coach.
Meanwhile, former Sports Illustrated fact-checker Mark McClusky blogs that Deford's mistakes seem trivial, but that he is far from the worst at SI. King Kaufman's piece at Salon was framed as "when nit-pickers go bad." Blogger Howard Owens defends Bunting.
The tip on the LAT correction came from the blog Franklin Avenue, which now owns its own domain and can be found at a new web address: franklinavenue.net.