A sentence in the recent Yahoo! Sports investigation into the KU ticket scandal suggests that The Kansas City Star let the story slip through its fingers.
The Yahoo! story features an interview with David Freeman, the sketchy real-estate developer who admits playing a role in the ticket-scalping operation. Freeman has been depicted as a man spilling his guts in order to win leniency in an unrelated bribery case. But the Yahoo! story suggests Freeman has tried to tell the story for some time.
"Freeman first divulged the details of the ticket scalping in an
interview with a current Yahoo! Sports reporter during the summer of
2006," the story said.
The current Yahoo! Sports reporter in question is Jason King, one
of three bylined authors of the May 26 Yahoo! story. King covered KU sports for The Star from 2001 until the spring of 2007. He switched to the Chiefs beat for a few months before accepting a job at Yahoo!
King has acknowledged that Freeman spoke to him about Rodney Jones, a former director of ticket operations at Kansas and an alleged participant in the scam. Freeman's tantalizing accusation did not result in a story in The Star, however. As King explained to Tom Keegan, a Lawrence Journal-World columnist last week, The Star could not corroborate Freeman's tale.
"You can't just give an open mike to one guy," King told Keegan. "You have to back the story up. We weren't able to do that."
Pool
: "Kansas Reflection" by kansasexplorer3128
Showing 1-1 of 1
