There are many ways to read The New York Times’s recent story about its former star NFL reporter, Dianna Russini: a meditation on the ethics of a modern sports “insider” getting too close to a source; a commendable act of transparency following the scandal that ended her tenure at The Athletic; another chapter in the ongoing palace intrigue surrounding The Athletic’s place within The New York Times Company; etcetera. Then there’s a legal dimension. The paper’s decision to scrutinize its own dirty laundry may seem like typical Times internal-affairs politics, but it was also a highly unusual decision by a media company to publish information that would ordinarily remain behind H.R. walls.

Consider the detail that generated perhaps the most chatter: Russini’s reported $800,000 annual salary. That’s a striking figure for a so-called print journalist, and the comparisons—to Adam Schefter, Maggie Haberman, and other star reporters—quickly followed. What interested me was less the number than its provenance. Katherine Rosman and Ken Belson, the story’s authors, attributed the detail to “a former manager who had knowledge of her salary negotiation.” In other words, the figure came from an employee, current or former, with direct knowledge of a confidential employment matter, and the Times decided to publish it.

The salary wasn’t the only internal information on display. Readers were given a glimpse into contract-renewal talks, executive deliberations, the company’s evolving response to the Sedona photographs, even the mechanics of the internal review that followed—who conducted it, what questions were asked, and how management’s thinking changed as additional information emerged. It begs the question: What obligations does a news organization owe its own employees when they become the subject of reporting?

Legally speaking, the Times enjoys broad constitutional protection to publish truthful information about matters of public concern. Still, that protection is not limitless, and I suspect this story received a particularly searching prepublication review from the paper’s lawyers. To me, some of the omissions were almost as interesting as what made it into print.

The article, for example, never explicitly stated that Russini and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel had an affair. Nor, remarkably, did it address whether Russini and the Times Company entered into any separation agreement when she left The Athletic. And there was a curious coda: The story recounted how Russini had responded to a Times reporter by text message, later asked not to be quoted, then was subsequently informed that no off-the-record agreement existed. In effect, the article paused to justify its own reporting. That passage, in particular, felt revealing—not because of what it indicated about Russini, but rather what it suggested about the Times’s broader view of confidentiality.

If the newsroom had been willing to report this aggressively on one of its own journalists, what are the confidentiality expectations for every other reporter and editor who works there? Should they expect to get lit up on their way out? I asked the paper’s spokesperson, who responded: “New York Times journalists have a long history of reporting on the Times Company fully and fairly. The Times newsroom follows the same ethical standards as it does with any coverage, and operates independently from the business side and other parts of the company such as The Athletic. Our journalists were transparent about their reporting with the subjects of the story and gave all parties an opportunity to provide comments, additional information, and context.”

Journalism, of course, is an enterprise devoted to getting information out. But it often accomplishes that goal by doing the exact opposite. Entire careers are built on assurances of confidentiality, explicit and implicit, that allow sources to speak candidly without fear of exposure. That’s especially true in the world of sports insiders—hybrid reporter-personalities whose source relationships are increasingly the product itself. The value of Shams Charania and Ian Rapoport lies in their ability not only to write stories but also to cultivate networks of coaches, executives, agents, and players who are willing to share information that nobody else can get. In an era when A.I. threatens to commoditize so much of the information business, those relationships have only become more valuable.

Notably, the Russini story ventured into the evolving and sensitive terrain of sourcing. It’s one thing for outsiders to speculate that a star journalist may have become too close to her sources, and to implicitly question her impartiality. It’s another for The New York Times to scrutinize those relationships from the inside and, in the process, come awfully close to exposing the source relationships of a sister publication. (The distinction between the Times and The Athletic, as my partners Dylan Byers and Julia Alexander noted on their podcast, The Grill Room, looms large inside 620 Eighth Avenue and seemingly motivated this magnum opus.) Anyway, that’s delicate territory. The press has spent decades defending the importance of confidential sourcing. In fact, in its 1991 Cohen v. Cowles Media decision, the Supreme Court found that a news organization can be held liable when it breaks a promise of confidentiality to a source.

I certainly don’t expect anyone to file suit. But it’s not hard to imagine the kinds of arguments that might arise if a reporter believed an employer had impaired her ability to cultivate confidential relationships with coaches, agents, executives, or other sources whose trust is essential to her work. More broadly, the episode raises fascinating questions about implied promises within a newsroom, whether a reporter’s source relationships belong to the reporter or the institution, and whether an employer owes any obligation not to expose those relationships after the employment relationship ends—yes, even when the relationship itself may strike some observers as ethically problematic.

These issues rarely surface because news organizations rarely publish this sort of internal exposé about one of their own reporters. But as insider journalism becomes an increasingly important part of the media ecosystem, they’re worth thinking about. The irony, then, is that while the article is ostensibly concerned with the ethics of reporter-source relationships, it devotes far less attention to the legal, professional, and institutional consequences of exposing those relationships. That turns out to be a more complicated subject than the piece acknowledges.

Jared Kushner’s younger brother, Joshua, and Bob Iger hired investment bankers to look into buying a majority stake in any NBA team that winds up in Vegas. [Bloomberg]

Dave Portnoy has a new book coming out tomorrow, and he’s been making the rounds to shill it. [WSJ, N.Y. Post, Front Office Sports]

Consultant Chris Bevilacqua sounds off on the state of college sports: “The current system is broken, and there are only two realistic options for what comes next: a federal framework that restores stability and national standards, or the continuation of today’s chaos. There is no option three.” [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

See you tomorrow,
John