The minute I saw this story, I knew it was going to be a bad
idea, poorly executed that was going to cause a ton of people to go apeshit.

That said, the race thing wasn’t what made me really freaked
out. Read this thing and tell me it doesn’t sound Stephen Glass-esque, as in Hack Heaven-like or anything else he wrote.

The use of vague sources.

The black 12-year-old dealing drugs.

The angry Russian chick.

The old guy who lived there his whole life and was all Walt
Kowalski about it.

The vivid scenes that perfectly illustrated his key points.

The editor of the story has already ponied up that this was not exactly a perfect piece. I’m imagining they’ll find more problems later of a completely different variety.

It would not surprise me in the slightest if this thing
started to fall apart somewhere in the next six to eight months. Some smart
journalist manages to go out there and isn’t able to find people or places or
some such thing that makes this difficult to believe.

I get the sense this guy was trying to make a point and he
worried less about how he made it.