Caleb Hannan’s Grantland profile of inventor Essay Anne Vanderbilt took an ugly turn when Vanderbilit committed suicide, causing many to blame the suicide on Hannan, who disclosed that Dr. V was transgender. My take on editor-in-chief Bill Simmons’ apology here. Christina Kahrl addresses the cavalier way in which Hannan dealt with the outing:
We’re here because Essay Anne Vanderbilt is dead. And she’s dead because — however loath she was to admit it — she was a member of a community for whom tragedy and loss are as regular as the sunrise, a minority for whom suicide attempts outpace the national average almost 26 times over, perhaps as high as 41 percent of all trans people. And because one of her responses to the fear of being outed as a transsexual woman to some of the people in her life — when it wasn’t even clear the story was ever going to run — was to immediately start talking and thinking about attempting suicide. Again.
It was not Grantland’s job to out Essay Anne Vanderbilt, but it was done, carelessly.
Not simply with the story’s posthumous publication; that kind of casual cruelty is weekly fare visited upon transgender murder victims in newspapers across the country. No, what Hannan apparently did was worse: Upon making the unavoidable discovery that Vanderbilt’s background didn’t stand up to scrutiny, he didn’t reassure her that her gender identity wasn’t germane to the broader problems he’d uncovered with her story. Rather, he provided this tidbit to one of the investors in her company in a gratuitous “gotcha” moment that reflects how little thought he’d given the matter. Maybe it was relevant for him to inform the investor that she wasn’t a physicist and probably didn’t work on the stealth bomber and probably also wasn’t a Vanderbilt cut from the same cloth as the original Commodore. But revealing her gender identity was ultimately as dangerous as it was thoughtless.
Dreher pushes back on the rush to blame Hannan:
Is Caleb Hannan morally responsible for Dr. V’s suicide? There’s no doubt that she would be alive today if he hadn’t begun writing the piece about her. But there’s also no doubt that Dr. V was happy to cooperate with the piece as long as she could control what was going to be written. She knew that the author was a golf nut and a fanboy of her invention. She also loved passing herself off as a mysterious genius. Trouble was, she couldn’t control the story, and once the reporter started digging, he found that the mysterious Dr. V was not at all who she said she was — and that her deceptions had victims. I think Hannan can’t be blamed for this mentally ill person’s suicide. He didn’t set out to take her down. He set out to write an admiring story about a reclusive genius who invented a new golf tool that stood to greatly improve the game. He had no idea, could not possibly have had any idea, where this story was going. When he found out her ultimate secret, how could he have kept it? She was happy to lie constantly when it suited her, and to steal, and to threaten, but when the journalist unraveled all her lies, she killed herself. And this is the journalist’s fault?
Josh Levin thinks the tragedy illustrates “the dangers of privileging fact-finding and the quest for a great story over compassion and humanity”:
I believe that “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” was a story worth telling, but this was not the right way to tell it. “What began as a story about a brilliant woman with a new invention had turned into the tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself,” Hannan writes after describing Dr. V’s 2008 suicide attempt, at once revealing his ignorance about trans issues and his protagonist’s utility as a fascinating narrative arc. When you reread the story knowing that Essay Anne Vanderbilt is dead, the whole thing feels cold-hearted. … I don’t believe that Caleb Hannan and his editors were willfully callous. This is the kind of story, though, that breeds cynicism about journalists. It is a piece of writing that treats its subject as a series of plot points rather than a person, and that seems concerned with little else aside from propelling itself toward a dramatic conclusion.
A reader sounds off:
I found this tragic story and the coverage it has received compelling from day one. I have read all three articles on Grantland and other takes on the article and have been waiting for The Dish to weigh in. As someone who has an undergrad degree in journalism – I am actually a corporate writer now – and is almost half-way to a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, suicide is something I have reflected upon a lot as are journalistic ethics.
First, I find it extremely unfair to try and blame Hannan for Dr. V’s suicide. This was not her first attempt at suicide and more than likely would not have been her last if she never spoke to Hannan. It’s very likely that it was only a matter of time before she was approached by someone else. She told many lies for financial gain. She was deceiving her investors. She accepted the interview because – and I am assuming here – it would further promote her product and that would make her more money. Lies have a way of being discovered, especially lies told to many people.
Was the story insensitive to Dr. V? Absolutely. The story came off as more salacious than it needed to be and her gender changing should have never been included because it is irrelevant. That being said, suicide is a personal decision that an individual makes for his or herself. One person cannot compel another person to commit suicide. Hannan is no more responsible for her suicide than is her partner who is probably kicking herself for missing the warning signs. The only person responsible for Dr. V’s suicide is Dr. V.
The Dish 