by John Walters

Let’s get the important part over with first: I want to apologize to Alex Putterman and to the staff of Awful Announcing.

I hate being wrong. Like most adults, I hate admitting that I was wrong. But when I am wrong, and it happens often, I hate myself if I don’t own up to it. Here, I was wrong.

Let me tell you what happened. At the restaurant where I work (and worked part-time even when I was at Newsweek) I just finished a 13-hour day. Bartended back-to-back parties. Anyway, about 4 hours into my shift, a friend texts to tell me that it looks as if Awful Announcing rewrote the Caitlyn Jenner theme I posted last November. Bleacher Report had already done a similar re-write.

I’m gazing at the photo atop the story. The headline looks as if someone tried to summarize the story I wrote eight months earlier in one sentence. And the first few grafs had no mention of my piece. I was livid.

I completely forgot that Alex had interviewed me about this about a month ago. A lot has happened in my life since them, including two close family members being hospitalized and my working 6 days a week, and I completely forgot. Worse, I did not read to the bottom of the piece.

Anyway, I snapped and that was uncalled for. And there I was serving 400 corporate types on a “team-building” outing with an open bar. But here’s what’s truly the gist of it: I was wrong. Please accept my apology.  I’m sorry, Alex. And now that I’ve read the story, I think you did an excellent job.

Sincerely,

John Walters