On January 15, freelance sports blogger Caleb Hannan published a longform article at Grantland documenting his eight-month search for the truth behind Yar Golf’s “physics-defying” putter and its inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt.

Over the course of Hannan’s reporting for this essay, he discovered that Vanderbilt’s claims regarding her academic credentials turned out to be unverifiable. As he dug deeper, he learned from her investors and court documents that she might be a con artist. He also stumbled upon a facet of Vanderbilt’s life that should have been inconsequential, but which he thought was important – nay, “shocking” – enough to focus at least part of his piece on: she was a transgender woman.

According to Hannan’s own accounting of events, Vanderbilt asked him from the beginning to “focus on the science,” and not on her. He agreed to this. As he investigated her claims and found that some of them didn’t pass the smell test, he was well within his rights to do more research. As a journalist he had an obligation to tell the truth given the context of his story. Where that obligation ended – in fact, where that obligation never even approached – was her gender identity.

In his essay, Hannan details at least one scenario where he discussed Vanderbilt’s gender identity with an investor of hers, and it becomes clear as the article progresses that he viewed her transition as another aspect of her con. Indeed, he casts her increasingly agitated email exchanges with him over the course of the reporting period as attempts to obfuscate his ability to tell the entire story. It probably didn’t occur to him that she didn’t want to discuss her gender or have her trans status publicized.

And yet, he did it. And it killed her. Vanderbilt committed suicide on October 18, 2013, almost exactly three months before the piece went to print. Hannan styled the final paragraphs of his essay as a “eulogy,” clicked “save” in his word processor, and sent it to his editors at Grantland, who had no problem publishing the final product. ...