Update: The original title of this piece said that the writer "nearly" outed gay athletes. After seeing the original version of the story, "nearly" has been removed. He outed these athletes. He provided height, weight and country of origin for athletes he met on Grindr. Hines must be suspended at the very least; A flat-out firing should be strongly considered. What he did was inexcusable and deplorable.

Original: Oh did Nico Hines think he had a scoop. When he decided to bait gay Olympians into revealing themselves to him on Grindr at the Olympic Village in Rio, he knew his editors were going to be thrilled. He could just smell the clicks on his story.

Of course, what the straight guy didn't realize was what a terrible idea it was to publicly share key identifiers that would help people identify whom these athletes were and possibly lead to a mass outing. It would be bad enough if they were all divers from Western Europe. But Hines didn't stop there, admitting in the piece that at least one was from a homophobic country. And he didn't stop there, he even identified the sport the athlete was in!

The whole piece was badly conceived by a straight guy who really has no idea what it is to be gay and closeted. I would love to out athletes, but I would never do it and never share publicly identifiers that narrowed the list to one or two dozen people.

Sadly, Daily Beast editor John Avlon thinks a couple edits and excuses dismiss the issue. Hopefully the LGBT people at the Daily Beast ask for a more in-depth review of practices by the site.

Don't forget to share: