The conventional wisdom: if you want to bury some not-so-great news, put it out Friday evening, when much of the media and the audience has its guard down. In our 24/7 news cycle, the Friday newsdump means putting an entire weekend of coverage between your embarrassing admission and Monday morning, when most people will catch up on the last 2.5 days of news.
It is a tried-and-true strategy in politics and elsewhere.
It’s become a tired Washington ritual for politicians to deliver potentially embarrassing news just before the weekend, when coverage typically slows. This campaign season, both the Obama and McCain campaigns have dumped documents on news organizations late on Fridays.
As crisis communications becomes increasingly common, you betcha college athletic programs are in on the Friday newsdump wave.
And that brings us to Ohio State — far from the first college athletic program to release sensitive or controversial materials late at night or entering a weekend.
The news cycle on this story — which is first and foremost about domestic violence allegations and an institution’s response — has evolved, but one thing has remained consistent: many of the biggest revelations have come at strange hours.
Let’s start with Aug. 3.
At the time of this half-joking tweet, Urban Meyer had been put on administrative leave two days prior.
Seventeen minutes later, Meyer posted this apology for his performance at Big Ten Media Days, when he’d appeared to lie about his knowledge of a 2015 incident:
We also soon found out that Zach Smith, the fired assistant coach, was in a chair being interviewed by ESPN at that same hour.
Meyer’s tweet barely got ahead of what turned into a Friday evening media tour by Smith.
Smith went on radio in Columbus ...
Zach Smith: "I was not a good husband. I pushed her buttons. I could make her mad easily. There's a lot of things I did wrong. That's between her and I. There was never domestic abuse. I never hit her. Never got arrested. Never got charged."
— Yahoo Sports College Football (@YahooSportsCFB) August 3, 2018
... and soon after that, his interview with ESPN aired during the 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter.
Aug. 17’s late-Friday news wasn’t exactly dumped on purpose, but it got bizarre quickly and maintained the sense that this story would develop only at odd hours.
This Friday looked like it was going to be pretty normal. Interim coach Ryan Day’s afternoon practice update was the first football news we’d heard from the program in weeks. It appeared to be just an update on how things were going, which just so happened to be on a Friday. And it was slightly odd to see a practice update in written format, but the Buckeyes had closed practices to media amid Meyer’s suspension.
Shortly after that, school president Michael Drake released a statement as a follow-up to comments made the day before, when he said that the investigation into Meyer didn’t have a firm two-week deadline, despite one being publicized at the time it was announced.
Not exactly a disingenuous newsdump, based on the fact that it was meant to clarify that had happened the night before.
But then, the day’s big bombshell, which came from outside the program.
Although tangential at best to the main point of the investigation, a Friday evening Stadium report (released by Brett McMurphy 44 minutes after Drake’s statement) detailed how Smith had sex toys shipped to the Ohio State football offices and had sex with a co-worker. Nobody really knew what to make of the report, and its impact seemed to have died down by Saturday morning.
On Aug. 22, after over 11 hours of deliberation on Meyer’s fate, OSU threw together a night press conference that included a failure to prepare the public.
Trustees are on the move. Large group just left their second-floor conference room, bags in hand.
— Bill Landis (@BillLandis25) August 23, 2018
In a vacuum, the night press conference was the end to a long day of waiting. Immediately following reporters noticing trustees rustling, OSU sent out an advisory that a press conference would begin in about six minutes. Not a big deal, since reporters were nearby all day, but the following point is what matters.
More importantly, only after the presser was finished did Ohio State release its public documents. This means reporters on hand were not armed with OSU’s findings of facts, meaning they couldn’t ask fully informed questions. Late on this Wednesday, Ohio State made it difficult to be truly held accountable.
Also, it was that Wednesday night when Meyer would say something that’d lead to a cowardly Friday newsdump.
What message do you have for Courtney Smith?
Urban Meyer: Well, I have a message for everyone involved in this. I’m sorry that we are in the situation. And I’m just sorry we are in this situation.
Meyer would not even use Courtney’s name when addressing her, nor would he apologize for anything in particular. That quickly led to national blowback, especially as people around the country read the investigation’s report, which affirmed Meyer didn’t give credence to any of Courtney’s allegations, despite having no good reason to trust Zach Smith.
So two days later, Meyer tweeted this on a Friday at 6:01 p.m. local.
Meyer and anyone who helped him craft his statement had nearly 48 hours to release something — anything — to respond to the torrent of criticism about the callous way he answered that question on Wednesday, yet chose to do it in the quietest part of the news cycle.
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