Missing Yahoos

In last month's Yahoos post, Money Makes the Yahoos Go Round (June 2024), I noted,

This month there was no single story that Google News flagged as dominant.

Copy that for the month of July. Of the 99 stories returned by Google News, four were about chess960, but I've already covered that story on my chess960 blog in the post The Magnus Merry-Go-Round (July 2024), e.g.

• 2024-07-25: $12 Million Raised For 'Revolutionary' Freestyle Series Of Tournaments (chess.com; PeterDoggers)

Instead of going there again, let's look instead at a couple of Chess.com stories on a much darker theme by another top chess writer. I doubt that the Google News AI bots would make the connection, but both stories go a long way to explain why there aren't more women in chess.

• 2024-07-18: Top International Arbiter Banned For Sexual Harassment During Major Tournaments (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • 'International chess arbiter Arild Rimestad from Denmark has been given a two-year ban by the FIDE Ethics and Disciplinary Commission (EDC) following multiple reports of sexual harassment against a female FIDE employee. In its decision dated July 13, the EDC has ruled that Rimestad cannot act as an arbiter or participate in any FIDE events for two years, with one year suspended for three years, contingent on no further violations. It's a significant ruling by the EDC, as it seems to be the first time the panel has decided on a sexual harassment-related case.'
  
  
• 2024-07-20: Jennifer Shahade Files Lawsuit Against US Chess For Misconduct And Retaliation (ditto) • 'Two-time U.S. Women's Chess Champion WGM Jennifer Shahade has filed a major lawsuit against US Chess, its president Randy Bauer, and chess writer Peter Tamburro, alleging defamation, retaliation, and discrimination after her public allegations of sexual misconduct.'

That second story takes us back to a previous post on this blog, The Dark Side of Women's Chess (March 2023; 'GM Nakamura reads the Wall Street Journal article, How Sexual Assault Allegations Against a U.S. Chess Grandmaster Went Unaddressed for Years (wsj.com)', i.e. GM Alejandro Ramirez). For more about WGM Shahade's complaint, see Jennifer Shahade Files Complaint Against US Chess (jenshahade.substack.com). It starts,

As a victim and whistleblower, I am fighting back against campaigns to silence me and retaliate against me for speaking up about sexual violence in chess.

Tamburro's contribution to the dark side was his article Due Process, Part II (uschess.org; PDF) in the American Chess Magazine, February 2024. Shortly thereafter, US Chess promoted the article with US Chess Executive Board Statement about American Chess Magazine Article "Due Process, Part II" (uschess.org). Its statement started,

The previously undisclosed details that Pete Tamburro’s new American Chess Magazine piece presents are accurate; we affirm that the facts relative to US Chess are supported by the record of written evidence.

The last time we saw Tamburro on this blog, we didn't actually see him. The follow-up to 2023 CJA Awards - Part 2 (August 2023), should have been 'Part 3', where I would have listed the winners in my favorite categories. When Tamburro won the 'Chess Journalist of the Year' for the second time, it brought back unpleasant memories of the first time, some 20 years earlier. Rather than relive those memories, I decided to drop coverage of the CJA.

The CJA's pay-to-play business model guarantees that first-string journalists who decline to pay invariably lose out to second-stringers. Both Chess.com journalists mentioned above, PeterDoggers and TarjeiJS, neither of whom has ever won a journalist of the year award, are far more deserving than Tamburro.

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]