When Page Six published photos last Tuesday showing The Athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini and New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel holding hands, hugging, and sitting side by side in a hot tub at the Ambiente — an adult-only resort in Sedona, Arizona — The Athletic executive editor Steven Ginsberg moved quickly to get ahead of it.
“These photos are misleading and lack essential context,” Ginsberg said in a statement to Page Six. “These were public interactions in front of many people. Dianna is a premier journalist covering the NFL, and we’re proud to have her at The Athletic.”
According to Status’s Natalie Korach, that aggressive public defense — issued before the full picture had been established — is where the situation began to spiral into something bigger than the photographs themselves. Status reports that The Athletic had opened an internal investigation immediately after first learning of the photographs. While Ginsberg was telling Page Six the photos were misleading, the organization had since begun a probe into the very situation he was dismissing. Staffers inside both The Times and The Athletic told Status the handling of the situation was “unnecessarily messy.” One called Ginsberg’s statement “reckless” and “premature.” Another went further, calling it “intentionally sneaky,” given that any mention of an active investigation was conspicuously absent.
The Athletic’s position eroded quickly. Front Office Sports reported midweek that the outlet was seeking verification that Russini’s account held up, with no evidence that anyone else was present at the resort. By the end of the week, Russini had been pulled from reporting duties, and The New York Times had confirmed the probe, examining both the nature of her relationship with Vrabel and her previous coverage of him.
Per Status, staffers inside both The Times and The Athletic were left questioning how Ginsberg could issue such a forceful public defense of Russini while an internal investigation was already underway. If the situation was serious enough to pull a top reporter from her duties, the argument goes, it was serious enough to warrant more caution before dismissing Page Six‘s reporting as misleading. Ginsberg’s statement — issued before any findings had been established — created a credibility problem. What began as a tabloid story about a reporter and a coach ended up becoming a story about institutional judgment at one of American journalism’s most prominent addresses.
The photos themselves had already generated a significant reaction across sports media. Albert Breer acknowledged on Toucher & Hardy that “of course” the situation raised questions about Russini’s past reporting on Vrabel and his teams, while cautioning against applying the scrutiny unevenly to female reporters. Jeff Pearlman called it a painful double standard, arguing that a male journalist in the same situation would not have faced the same reaction, while acknowledging the meeting represented bad professional judgment regardless. WFAN’s Boomer Esiason said he believed the denials but predicted Russini would have difficulty dispelling doubts about her journalistic integrity going forward.
Vrabel, meanwhile, is skipping the Patriots’ pre-draft press conference on Monday, with VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf taking questions in his place. The Patriots head coach has not addressed the situation publicly since his initial statement to Page Six, in which he called the interaction “completely innocent” and said it didn’t deserve a response.
The Athletic’s handling of it since has ensured it will get one anyway.
