Open letter to STAT and Christopher Morales

[Bob Lemke]

Michael, that wasn't a silly question. I have no access to SCD "archives" and couldn't possibly discuss the subject without some timeline reference.

Many of you (Shelley, etc.) are under the mistaken impression that I was at the helm of SCD from the time we bought it in 1981. The fact is, I left as publisher of the sports division to take on a corporate role in acquisition and development sometime in the early- to mid-1990s. At that point my involvement with SCD was strictly as an occasional column contributor.

I believe I spelled all that out when this thread was "live" the first time. Feel free to look it up; I'm not so inclined.

I can say unequivocally that when I WAS publisher of SCD, Coaches Corner (if indeed they were advertising then) was in compliance with our customer service requirements, which at that time were much stricter than those that came into effect after Krause Publications was sold to a private equity investment firm. Under KP, an advertiser could be banned (and I banned dozens of them) if they failed to satisfy even a single reader complaint based on the "rules" that were published every issue.

[shelly]

Bob, if not you then who was in charge at the time cc was big in your magazine?

[RichardSimon]

Bob - so the private equity firm (Bain Capital perhaps?) (sorry I could not resist) was responsible for the quality of advertisers in the magazine?
So Bob, are you telling us though you were not personally not involved with SCD at the time of CC advertising, you had zero knowledge of what they were doing. No office grumblings going on? No staffers complaining to you at anytime about CC? No office gossip floating around, that derided the offerings of CC, that you were privy to? You were in corporate and never heard one word about the crimes being committed on the pages of SCD? Is that what you are telling us?

[Bob Lemke]

Shelley,

Again, specific dates would be necessary to determine who was the publisher of SCD at any point in time. And it is the publisher, not the editor or the ad manager who makes the ultimate determination as to who advertises.

Those who succeeded me as publisher included Steve Ellingboe, Hugh McAloon, Kevin Isaacson, Jeff Pozorski (I believe) and Dean Listle, who finally pulled CC's ad privileges.

I reiterate, after the company was sold, the customer service department was gelded, then gutted, and finally eliminated.

And yes, Richard, I am telling you that after I left the helm of SCD, I had no knowledge of CC or any other problem advertiser. I don't recall ever hearing about any hobby concerns with Coaches Corner until they surfaced on this forum as the boggie man. That was after I had left the employ the F+W in 2006.

[RichardSimon]

Originally Posted by Bob Lemke

I reiterate, after the company was sold, the customer service department was gelded, then gutted, and finally eliminated.

And that is what is so great about so many corporations,, public be damned, abetting a criminal enterprise? who cares, let us just keep cashing the checks until we can't.

[sports-rings]

Bob,

As I understand it, you are currently involved with SCD.

Since it sounds like you took no steps in the past to alert the public to Coach's Corner, what steps and actions are on your agenda to alert the collecting public who read your publication about the crap that Coach's Corner and Chris Morales are still involved in?

Do you have any plans to do investigative journalism on Chris Morales, or Coach's corner going forward? Or will the philosophy at SCD continue to be head-in-the sand and see-no-evil hear-no-evil participation?

[Bob Lemke]

Michael,

My only "involvement" with SCD is my blanket permission to editor Tom Bartsch to pick up anything he cares to off my blog and reprint it in SCD. I take no remuneration for such use, other than a complimentary subscription.

To suggest that I "investigate" this type of thing now, when I have not been an employee of F+W since 2006, is inane.

[shelly]

Bob, I am really not trying to insult you but if you can please reply to question below I would greatly appreciate it.

Do you remember Ted Taylor of Stat Authentic's? Now better known as "TTA" one of CC's best known experts. Could you or all the other people that you blame not see the conflict of interest between SCD and CC then? At some time in your comments it would be nice if you just admit somewhere along the line you let a lot of this happen.
It also would be nice if you could stop what is happening now. I would think that you still have some say with the people at SCD

[travrosty]

I think the standing offer of allowing scd to pick up any of his blog posts in return for a free subscription should be rescinded by bob in light of this.

or maybe make a lot of blog posts about what is currently happening in the hobby regarding these organizations that continue to offer this junk and urge scd to pick up those posts?

[Bob Lemke]

Michael, Now you are simply being obtuse. You are evidently not going to let facts get in the way of your crusade. You're going to have to continue your rants without further participation from me.

[RichardSimon]

Evasive action always occurs on Net54 when the person being questioned cannot answer the questions any longer.

[thetruthisoutthere]

This all started because because Mr. Lemke asked me "Do you have authorization from SCD to reprint its copyrighted content?"

Why would you care, Mr. Lemke?

First of all, I asked Mr. Bartsch if he could send me past articles from SCD containing the interviews SCD had with Chris "I Never Saw An Autograph I Didn't Like" Morales and Drew Max. I wanted them for a blog I was going to write titled "Christopher L. Morales May 2005 SCD Interview Revisited."

The moderator of the blog received direct permission from Mr. Bartsch to use those articles and Mr. Bartsch emailed those articles to me.

So why would you care?

Why the defensive attitude?