OOPS

An institutional failure at Rolling Stone resulted in a deeply flawed article about a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia,

Rolling Stone has retracted the story. So, what is the cost to the staff and especially the writer of this "story":

At the same time the review came out, Rolling Stone officially retracted the story and said sorry. But the publisher, Jann Wenner, has decided not to fire anyone on staff. He believes the missteps were unintentional, not purposefully deceitful.

What did the "reporter" have to say for herself?

Erdely told Columbia that in retrospect, I wish somebody had pushed me harder" about reaching out to the three friends.

So no one is to blame for the shoddy reporting and the writer felt that she should have been "Pushed harder" to do her job. Funny thing, this isn't the first time Sabrina Erdley has written a story that had some errors in it:

In 2011 Erdely reported a story for Rolling Stone about child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia. Erdely's story told about a fifth grade altar boy referred to by the pseudonym "Billy Doe" whom "brutal attacks turned ... into a sullen, drug-addicted loner," alleging a "high-level conspiracy." Billy Doe was an adult when he made his accusations, resulting in criminal charges leading to the jailing of three church employees and a major civil suit by Billy Doe against the church.[10]

Ralph Cipriano wrote in Newsweek that "Erdely didn't know or bother to find out ... that Billy had already told his story to the archdiocese, police, and a grand jury, and would subsequently retell it to two different juries in two criminal cases. And every time he told his story, the details kept changing." In the first iteration of the rape Billy Doe claimed to have endured, he was knocked unconscious, stripped, tied to a church altar with sashes, and then anally raped on the altar for five hours. Subsequent iterations of the rape recounted by Billy Doe became increasingly less dramatic; a final version omitted the five-hour altar anal rape. Instead, Billy Doe explained, he had been coerced into engaging in mutual masturbation.[11] Cipriano also criticized Erdely for failing to include information on Billy Doe's background that could have impugned his credibility; he had, for instance, been arrested six times, once while trafficking 56 bags of heroin.[12][13]

When Erdely was covering the Billy Doe story, her husband was a criminal prosecutor for the District Attorney of Philadelphia which was overseeing the case. Rolling Stone editors said that it was not a conflict of interest because he was not personally involved in the prosecution.[14] William Anthony Donohue at the Catholic League denounced "malicious distortions of the kind found in Erdely’s diatribe."[9] The conviction of one church employee has since been overturned and a new trial ordered for the one remaining (the third church employee died in prison while appealing his conviction).[15][16]

She wrote an article of a woman alleging her Gynecologist raped her, a story of a petty officer claiming rape by three soldiers, and a bullying of Gay students in Minnesota. Kind of seeing a pattern here. The question comes up, who was hurt by her "not being pushed harder" by her editors?

UVA applications are down

The fraternity accused and the men accused of this crime

Rolling Stone's journalistic integrity (If they had any in the first place)

Victims of actual sexual abuse

Then there are the people who will believe this story no matter how many retractions are written. So sure, keep her on as a writer and lets see who else can be irrevocably hurt by her "Not being pushed"