This Daily Beast story is horrifying on almost every level. We must all do better.

This story the Daily Beast wrote yesterday, with “I got three Grindr dates in an hour in the Olympic Village” as the initial headline, was horrifying to me on many levels. It is important enough for me to write my first Medium post about it. It’s a bit long, but I hope you will read through it in full. I am know you are very busy and I am very busy but this is important and I appreciate you making time.

For those of you who aren’t fully up to speed, Daily Beast reporter Nico Hines, a straight male, decided to go on Grindr to “join the bacchanalia” of “sex sex sex” going on in the Olympic Village, and soon discovered that, in his words, there were “No prizes for guessing that Grindr proved more of an instant hookup success than Bumble or Tinder”. He subsequently told several stories about homosexual athletes who he was able to successfully meet up with on Grinder. Nico Hines gave personally identifying details about these athletes, despite the fact that they may or may not be in the closet and may or may not be from countries where homosexuality is illegal. He did this in the name of what seems to be some sort of combination of investigative journalism, hilarious winky face gay bashing, and clickbait. I don’t know how to weight the relative levels of these factors, you’d have to ask Nico Hines who has not sent a single tweet or made a single public statement since this story was published. But I have my theories.

This story was first reported on an incredibly brave and thoughtful reporter Mark Joseph Stern of Slate in an article titled This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical. I know this article is long and you are busy, but I suggest you read it in full because it’s amazing.

I come across this article on Facebook while flying to Chicago to visit my Dad for the weekend. One friend of a friend, who happens to be a woman, posted “Jesus fucking christ. He may very well end up with blood on his hands. Unethical, disgusting and dangerous.” An amazing friend of mine, Danielle Weissberg, reposted this post with the additional comment “Everyone involved with this should be fired.” Yep, pretty straightforward, and I personally agree. I would have reposted this instantly if the WiFi on United wasn’t terrible (Seriously, what’s up with that? Open sidenote to Elon Musk: please stop focusing on spaceships to quickly solve wifi, and then get back to spaceship, thx!).

I thought that the excellent journalist coverage by Mark Joseph Stern and combined with a follow-up story, also excellent, also on Slate by J. Lowder would soon lead to a coverage snowball by all relevant news stories. This, despite Daily Beast Editor in Chief John Avlon’s valiant attempts to cover up the story a few hours after Mark’s article as capture by this tweet with a sorry-not-sorry editor’s note.

And yet, during my few brief interludes of WiFi bliss where I had some internet access, I googled around and begin to become increasing concerned by and horrified by this story that the majority of the world seems to be curiously unconcerned about.

Let’s go back to that Total Nonsense Non Apology #1 by Daily Beast Editor in Chief John Avlon. The Advocate wrote a pretty good summary of its nonsense, and LBGTQ Nation covered it in (mostly) full and NextNowNext. I suggest you read the articles yourself, as they are all excellent. But if you are too busy I will do my best to paraphrase. John Avlon, in response to increasing fear and concern about his newspaper’s offensive and downright dangerous article, says something along the lines of “We hear you, concerned citizens who are mostly LGBT. We take these complaints seriously because we care about LGBT, it’s part of our mission, you can read about it on our blog, the Daily Beast. We are better than most blogs in this respect. The Daily Beast is AMAZING. OBVIOUSLY! Anyway, I digress. So, it sounds like some of you mostly LGBT people think our article might literally threaten the safety of closeted gay Olympians. That wasn’t our intention. You are probably overreacting and they are probably fine. And it’s not homophobic because we also mentioned a few straight women and somehow that is relevant. But we hear you and we have made some edits to remove the parts you find most dangerous. I came up with this ‘concept piece’ — and for those of you who are not journalists this means it’s something more thoughtful than sleazy clickbait — to write about sex sex sex in Rio. It just so happens that the gay people of Grinder were the most attracted to my straight male reporter Nico Hines and cruising for sex sex sex, and so he went where the story was going. He never pretended to be anything he was not, other than a male on Grinder attempting to meet up with Gay Olympians, because somehow that is normal behavior for a straight male reporter. And any way isn’t in one some ways the their for not asking? Asking people their official sexual orientation, marital status, and Was he mocking or sex-shaming those on Grindr? No, no he was not. Trust me, I would know, I am a white straight male and also his boss and I approved this story. He was just being an amazing journalist, per usual. But some of you are touch too sensitive to realize that, and we take full responsibility for not being more clear, so I have made a few edits to remove the most dangerous parts. We now feel completely comfortable keeping the story up, although we will try to quietly bury it in the hard to find parts of our site in hopes the mainstream media won’t gain wind of it. If that happens, we might have to make a slightly less bullshit apology and we would prefer to not as apologies make The Daily Beast look bad and take time and we are very busy being AMAZING. We hope you feel grateful we have done this thing. Sorry again for any upset the original piece inspired, this edited version is totally fine and hilarious and please don’t complain about it anymore and please go away. XOXO, — John Avlon, Editor in Chief”.

Now, in case we have already forgotten while reading my long post what happened, please AGAIN read this Slate article by amazing journalist Mark Joseph Stern. It’s terrific! Editor in Chief John Avlon’s initial actions, in this human’s opinion, is an offensive set of excuses hidden by pretty words (bro knows how to write, that’s for sure) aimed at misdirecting everyone so this story can go quietly. It’s vaguely reminiscent of that time Emil Michael, Senior Vice President of Business for Uber, floated the idea at a fancy public New York Dinner of spending “one million dollars” to hire opposition researchers to ruin the lives of Sarah Lacy and 3 other journalists, LOL, and no one would know it was us LOL LOL ;-). He eventually sorta make a bullshit non apology by saying in a prepared statement that he didn’t mean what he said and it didn’t represent him or Uber despite the fact that he was at an Uber event and he works at Uber and he has full control over his mouth. And Travis sent one 1/14 of a tweetstorm of an apology but that’s ok because bro is busy and Emil STILL works at Uber and apparently that’s ok because he’s a friend of Travis’s and made a deal with Spotify which is somehow relevant . I guess that gives you at a free pass for threatening female journalists? LOLZ! And basically everyone basically let it slide except for Sarah Lacy (and me, Sarah Press) but she’s a woman so probably biased and just bitter because they considered trying to spend $1M ruining her life. Indeed, probably no one would have cared in the first place if it wasn’t for the foresight, empathy, and bravery of Ben Smith, Editor and Chief at Buzzfeed who is able to care about issues that affect people other than white straight males despite the fact that he is a white straight male enough to write one fucking important news story as that’s his job. True story, I actually tweeted at him last night in hopes he could write another one but didn’t hear back yet and someone’s gonna do something so HERE I AM. Anyway, I digress.

So back to this story. I may not be an Editor inChief of The Daily Beast like John Avlon, but I am the CEO of PokéDates. And I may not have had a blog before but I have a blog now, thank you Medium. And I may not be a man but the victim in this particular story isn’t a woman so you can’t say I am biased. So hello John Avlon, Editor and Chief of The Daily Beast. My name is Sarah Press and my opinions matter and you can listen to me or not but either way I will not be quiet. Anyway, I digress again. Apologies for the digression. Apologies for shouting. Apologies for anyone I may have offended.

Let’s finish this story. I know it’s long and takes time to read. But some things are important, and I appreciate you taking the time. So I get home and I see that good ole Editor and Chief John Avlon has realized that his non-apology has not quieted the Twittersphere as much as he had hoped. And while before it was just the LGBT community now some straight people are coming in and tweeting at him and it’s getting uncomfortable, so he decides to try to nip this story in the bud a touch more aggressively by taking the story down and officially saying an apology, which John Avlon also helpfully tweets “We Screwed Up. We’ll Do Better”. Still nothing from Nico Hines, which I get because John is his boss and probably told him not to say anything. Also nothing to the best of my knowledge from the Daily Beast twitter feed because apparently those 942K followers would rather read about Tim Kaine’s anti death penalty crucade and how you can’t believe anything TRUMP says. LOLZ. Sorry, I have a weird sense of humor, but that’s at least a little funny yeah?

Here it Total Nonsense Non Apology #2 in full. I again suggest you read it yourself but form your own opinions on what he is saying, but don’t do it while driving because in this human’s opinion it is so ridiculous it might make you fall asleep, or give you a seizure, or something. John Avlon I give you an A+ for execution on trying to squash this story but a D- for human empathy and taking responsibility for your actions. Let me break it down.

1. Love the energy to try to now purge the story from existence and pretend like your original headline never happened and not even really reference what you did but this is 2016, not 1984.
2. Love the strategy behind this first line “We were wrong. We were sorry.” Dig how now you are no longer John Avlon Editor in Chief, but this time as part of a collective team of editors. Not so keen to use your name anymore? John, I respect the strategy here and compliment your use of a throwback way of accepting responsibility but this is still 2016 not 1119 and you are not King Henry I. And for an interesting aside, read this article from Harvard Business Review and what it says about you that you say “we” instead of “I” and think about it in your free time. Or not, that is your call.
3. With respect to this line, “We succeed together and we fail together. This was a failure on The Daily Beast as a whole, not a single individual.” again, A for effort. John, that’s very noble of you to try to take the rest of the Daily Beast down with you (note, this is sarcasm). I personally thought you failed personally, and here you are trying to save your own job by using a rhetorical flourish to tie your fate in with the rest of your team. A for effort, F for leadership.
4. “Our hope is that removing an article that is in conflict with both our values and what we aspire to as journalists will demonstrate how seriously we take our error.” I 100% agree that’s your hope, but you can’t always get what you want.

Anyway, you can read the rest on your own time but if I may make a throwback reference of my own that is relevant to the Olympics I am going to pull a McKayla and let you know that I am not impressed. This nonsense non apology #2 is both way too little and way too late. I understand that it’s hard to admit when you are wrong and I understand you are busy but this is literally your job and you literally put people’s lives in danger in your horrible, disgusting, gay bashing, catfishing, clicky bait dumpster fire of an article and nothing you’ve said in the past 24 hours has given me any comfort that you’ve realized it. And this is part of why, in this human’s opinion, I think you are 10000% no longer qualified to be the Editor and Chief of any major publication, including but not limited to the Daily Beast. Period. But maybe that’s just me.

And so I post about it on Facebook, I am perhaps a little provocative because I am very bothered by this story, and also bothered by the fact that the only part of the media universe that seemed appropriately bothered are the ones focused specifically on LGBT issues. So yeah, maybe I am sounding a little threatening and make my Facebook friends feel a little uncomfortable. It’s a woman thing or a person thing depending on who you ask. Feel free to read my Facebook wall and decide for yourself if you have time.

But yes, I am irked. Why aren’t the rest of the MSM reporters covering this?? Why only the LGBT focused ones? That is 100% not acceptable. The LGBT articles are necessary but they are 1000000% not fucking sufficient. This is not a gay story, this is a human story. In case you think I am exaggerating about the lack of appropriate coverage, here’s a screenshot of what I found when I searched for this story around 8pm CT last night, also posted on my Facebook wall. Again, excellent coverage from the LGBT focused blogs, and a few from the lady focused Jezebel and The Mary Sue as well. I encourage you to all read each and every article by these reporters who within 10 hours of this story were able to find the time to do their jobs andwrite a thoughtful, thought provoking piece about this HORRIFYING thing that happened Thursday morning in Rio. And even the more prominent publications, State and NBC, seem to be covering it in their special LGBT units as if it’s a gay story instead of a story story.

But come on Practically Every Other Reporter In The World, Particularly the Straight Ones, I know you’re very busy, and I know that the newspaper industry is struggling, but surely there is one fresh faced young reporter from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, BBC, Buzzfeed (come on Ben Smith, I think you’re terrific, are you out sick this week?!?!). I don’t believe in outing people, as that is obviously offensive, but if reporters who identity as straight could email me with the exact time they published their story so I could see how many LGBT publications and occasional woman were able to write thoughtful pieces before 1 straight white dude found the time to write one article for one major publication I’d appreciate it. I know it’s a weird question, but I’m asking it anyway, and I’d actually appreciate if you could answer because I think it’s important. To the best of my very limited knowledge as I don’t have my own army of fact checkers, the only straight white male journalist to write anything about this yesterday morning or afternoon was Matt Lindner, who posted about it on Medium at 1:30pm. And the only reason I know that is because we became Facebook friends a week ago and I happened to see it on my newsfeed last last night (in fact, it was what reminded me that Medium was a thing and I could post here too, so a double thank you to Matt Lindner, you are a credit to your race, gender, sexuality, and humanity as a whole).

In fact, to the best of my (again VERY LIMITED) knowledge Matt Lindner is also the only white straight dude of my Facebook friends that I saw on my feed to post about this story AT ALL in a way that 100% says that it was terrible and doesn’t make excuses or try to say it’s actually sorta ok and at least they apologized. I am sure there are others, #notallwhitemales and such, but still, can we agree it’s a little weird? And straight white dude friends of mine, I do not mean to offend and don’t want to single you out, so let me know I am also a touch I disappointed in some of my badass lady SJWs (sidenote, when did caring about social justice become an insult?) as well for not picking up this mantel as much as I would have liked but it’s a slippery story that’s hard to pin down and at least there were A FEW ANGRY POSTS IN ALL CAPS APOLOGIES FOR SHOUTING from my ladies. Gosh, so many words, you gentle reader, are amazing for making it this far.

Anyway, I post on my wall, and prepare for people to mostly agree with me. But, not gonna lie, the response from my Facebook friends is, how do I put this nicely, underwhelming. Here’s what I heard.

1. I hear a lot of “This was pretty heavily covered today” and “And I'm not gonna comb every site but a quick Google shows yahoo, huffpo, esquire, many others covered it” yadda yadda etc. Which I am not 100% sure but seems to be indicating that my comment that I think more national coverage is…wrong? Which is confusing to me, as I am not wrong.
2. I hear a little bit of “The beast does a lot of great work, sad to see it degraded by a piece like this.” Here again I am open minded, but think that perhaps we should be a touch more concerned about the impact this hateful story on the reputations of the international olympians that were so casually outed for homophobic clickbait even though it risked their reputations and lives and a touch less concerned about the reputation of “The Beast”.
3. And I hear a bit of “This “NO ONE IS COVERING THE TRUTH AND BY NO ONE I MEAN I HAVEN’T SEEN IT” reaction is ludicrous.” To be honest at this point I am pretty confused and a little hurt. Unless I misread, it’s starting to sound like there is some perspective on this story where I am the bad guy in this story for being concerned. Now I am not perfect, nobody’s perfect, but I am like 99.999% sure that the worst part of the story isn’t me posting about it. Plus, fwiw, up until that point I hadn’t even used caps and I didn’t say any of those words, so who is this dude even quoting?

There was some other stuff as well, but you can just check it out on my Facebook wall if you are super curious. To be totally honest, at this point I am considering going to sleep and maybe crying a little. But before I go to bed, I tag a few of my lady friends, and one of them, an amazing human who happens to be a woman named Kathleen Meil, pipes in and responds to that friend of mine. And she says “I agree you should keep most of your rustled jimmies dedicated to the victims, but the fact that you’re reserving some for chastising Sarah’s reaction is *ludicrous.*”

And, not gonna lie, I feel a little better. Because I am not crazy. Or maybe I am. But maybe right now the world needs a little crazy. Everyone’s a little frustrated and a little confused and a little cynical and a lot busy and I get it. Honestly I do. Up until very recently I felt the same way. But it’s not ok. We must all to better. Immediately. Period. And this first Medium post about our friend John Avlon isn’t going into in itself change the world, but it’s a start.

So I channel my inner Judy Hopps and my inner Ellie Downie and my inner Jean Liu and my inner LeBron James because when he came back from being down 3–1 to beat the Warriors and win the NBA Finals it was FUCKING AMAZING and people from SF who says he just got lucky are kidding themselves. And I go to bed, because it’s very late and I am very tired.

BUT I woke up this morning and I wrote this Medium post. And sure, it’s a little long, but I hope at least some of you are keeping up. It’s my first post after all, and I was too busy to make it shorter, so hopefully you can power through and thank you if you have!

To recap, I am Sarah Press, a human being capable of empathy. This Daily Beast story is was horrifying on almost every level. Total Nonsense Non Apology #1 and Total Nonsense Non Apology #2 by John Avlon both nonsense, not apologies, and insulting. The national media’s response to date has been woefully insufficient. For that they should be ashamed and every single publication should be writing on this topic. Let’s shoot for that and work backwards. Again, all of this is just one human’s opinion.

As for you, Daily Beast Editor and Chief John Avlon. If I were your boss, I would make you publicly personally apologize for what you did and acknowledge what you did wrong. I’d also make you privately apologize to to the individuals who were victimized by your poor decision making. And then, most likely, I would fire you for being bad at your job. Because I am a boss who believes in second chances, but I am not particularly inclined to believe in fourth chances as that’s not really a thing. You failed me at least 3 different times in the past week by greenlighting this horrifying story in the first place, writing Total Nonsense Non Apology #1, and writing Total Nonsense Non Apology #2. You made my paper The Daily Beast look bad and you are bad at your job and I don’t have time for excuses because I am very busy. But at the end of the day, that’s between you and your boss and your board of directors. I won’t be reading any more articles from The Daily Beast while you remain Editor and Chief, but I wasn’t reading your blog anyway. This is my one match for this particular news story.

For everyone else, if you agree with this post I’d love it if you could share this story through whatever medium you prefer (Facebook, Twitter, #random Slack channel, Medium recommending, etc). And I’d love it if you could comment, whether you agree or disagree, and I will do my best to reply. And I’d love it if you have more time you could reach out to John Avlon, and maybe his bosses, and let them your opinions on this Daily Beast Story. Because your opinion matters, even when it differs from mine.

And, if you still have time. I’d love it if you could do other things that matter to help make the world a little bit better and a little less crazy. Do what you can as your schedule permits, I know we’re all very busy.

And let me know how I can help. Because, while I am very busy, but for things that are important to me I will make the time. And right now it is very important to me that we all start doing better. And every step is a start.

Either way. Thank you for listening and taking the time to read my Medium Post. Sarah out.