An Editor's Journal

Came across this whole Sarah J. Phillips debacle yesterday, and was sucked into reading everything I could find about it. The whole thing reads like a freakin mystery novel, and even kind of falls into that Catfish vein. 

The short of it: A 22-year-old freelance ESPN writer was duping the world and scamming online readers/writers/creators. This just came out into the open a couple days ago, and I’ve aggregated the articles as best as I can here for you. I did this because I had a hard time finding all the stuff and thought how it’d be nice to just aggregate it into once piece. 

I know it’s a lot of reading, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Again, this is easily of the most fascinating media and journalism-related stories I’ve ever read. 

So here it is in somewhat chronological order: 

• The original investigative report - here. 
• Sarah Phillips takes to Twitter, with bits and pieces of a confession - here.  
• Take a look at her Twitter account - here. 
• One guy’s first hand experience with Phillips trying to scam him - here. 
• A couple more scamming victims come out - here. 
• Yet another scamming victim gives his side of the story - here. 
• ESPN fires Phillips as the story comes out - here. 
• Turns out Phillips also acquired some of the most popular parody Twitter accounts on the web through illegal means - here. 
• A bit more history comes out about Phillips and her partner in the scam - here.  
• Phillips partner in crime emerges as the real puppet master - here. 
• This story has wider media ramifications, as detailed in the Huff Post - here.

Just. Freakin. Crazy.