Thiefs & Dynamite & Journalism

Before I start: I consider Troy Brownfield to be a personal friend. He conducted the interview of Pat Lee that appeared on Newsarama and has drawn a bunch of criticism.

Let's go over the points of criticism.

Why was Pat Lee was only asked one softball question about his past problems of using other artists' work passed off as his own and leaving so many people unpaid (covered by simply asking him about past controversy)?

Any more direct question wouldn't have been answered and may have resulted in the interview not taking place at all. While some suggest that not running an interview with Pat Lee was the better option, I question that. Why not run it? To avoid publicizing it? You mean like a few other sites (Broken Frontier, CBR, ICV2, The Beat) did by running full press releases with little-to-no editorializing?

So, instead of just copying and pasting PR straight from the publisher, an interview was conducted. A question that tried to introduce the topic was offered, giving us the chance that Pat Lee might answer it, rather than shrug it off.

Oh and a second "softball" was kinda put to him: "Nrama: At this stage of your career, does Pat Lee have something to prove?"

Seems to me like this was an attempt to bring up the fact that so much of "his" work hasn't actually been done by him. A subtle "do you need to prove that you DON'T need Alex Milne" if you will.

So Pat Lee gets 1-2 "softball" questions about his past fuck ups. That's 1-2 more questions on the subject than he's received and answered from other sites, so far. That's getting him on the record as trying to avoid his past instead of answer for it and redeem himself, which says just about as much as any bullshit he would have popped out with if he HAD been pressed and, through some miracle, actually answered the questions rather than killing the interview.

Yet, somehow, about 1/3 of the bitching post-interview from fans and the blogosphere is about Troy & Newsarama even conducting the interview, rather than Pat Lee being a responsibility-dodging douche and someone Dynamite Entertainment shouldn't have given another chance to.