A feature story and a suicide

So journalists everywhere are talking about this feature story published this week in Grantland about this woman who invented a great new golf putter -- but who also had a lot more going on in her life.

You don't need to read the story.

But the controversy is this: The writer started out looking to write a story about this obscure woman who invented this putter and ended up finding out that pretty much everything about this lady was a fabrication -- from her name, to her college degrees to her job and, well, her sex.

The woman turned out to be a man.

And, as recounted late in the story, as the author pushed forward on the story and the subject asked him to stop, he didn't -- and the subject killed herself.

Yikes.

That's some heavy stuff. And it has lead to a debate on ethics and whether you should pursue a story when the subject begs you not, how do you make that decision and whether a story about a golf putter needed to include the detail that the she was really a he and on and on ....

Interesting.

So many people have attacked the writer, Caleb Hannan.

And others have wondered aloud. Here too. Here.

And some have defended the story, too.