05-26-2010 EX-STAR REPORTER HELPS BLOWS LID ON KU TICKET SCANDAL Jason King, former Kansas City Star sports reporter who left the paper in 2008 to join Yahoo! Sports, is part of a trio of reporters at Yahoo who have broken a major story involving a ticket scandal at the University of Kansas. King, who wrote a book ("Kansas Jayhawks: A Year to Remember") after KU won the 2008 NCAA Basketball championship (LINK), fingers a number of prominent people associated with KU who made possibly up to $3 million scalping tickets. (LINK TO YAHOO STORY)
05-26-2010 KING SIT ON STORY? "Wouldn't quite say King nailed it. Sounds like he sat on this story when he was at the KC Star. What's that about? "Freeman first divulged the details of the ticket scalping in an interview with a current Yahoo! Sports reporter during the summer of 2006."
KC Star headline:
"KU report: Group diverted more than $1M in tickets" "I don't think diverted is the right verb there...more like stole from KU fans."
SIT ON MAJOR STORY? "So the beat writer for the KU Star becomes aware of this story in 2006 and chooses to sit on it? Isn't that a fairly major story in and of itself? Had this story been about K-State, the Star would have printed an extra edition."
SHOTS AT KING UNFAIR "I think a couple of the feedback shots at King are really unfair. We don't know whether or not he sat on the story. A story like this couldn't be singled sourced. Just Freeman's word about what was going on wouldn't be enough for King to get a story into print. My guess is he worked this puppy for all it was worth while he was at the Star and couldn't get a second source."
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