Fox Sports targets content creators

Fox Sports infamously fired all of its online writers three years ago as it pivoted to video.

Now, The Post has learned, there has been a pivot back.

The website and app hired longtime ESPN executive Kevin Jackson as its new managing editor of FoxSports.com. Jackson is expected to add more original content creators, who can write, talk and appear on video.

In an interview with The Post, Jackson would not say how many writer-types Fox Sports will add, but it seems within reason it could hire around five-to-10 new voices to the site.

“Coming out of the gate, we want to be a daily destination for fans that becomes essential,” Jackson said. “To do that, we are going to need to grow out our voices, and we are going to have to add to a pretty substantial roster that we already have.”

Fox Sports is not going to try to be fully comprehensive, covering everything, but it does want more original content.

“Storytelling is a real tenet of what we are hoping to build here,” Jackson said.

Jackson mentioned that Fox Sports already has some original content people with Charlotte Wilder, Martin Rogers, Bob Pockrass, Mark Titus and Jason McIntyre.

In June 2017, Fox Sports’ then-president, Jamie Horowitz, decided to gear the site toward “premium video,” which resulted in around 20 writers and editors being let go. Fox Sports lost much of its relevance after that. In July of this year, Fox Sports redesigned its app.

Jackson has a multiplatform approach that ESPN.com has utilized for years.

This many times means presenting the same story over written, audio and video media. He considers himself “a storyteller by trade.”

“We want to serve them with something that is smart, and we want to serve them with something that is surprising and unexpected so they feel like they want to come back the next day,” said Jackson, 50.

He spent half of his life at ESPN, including helping to launch ESPNet.SportsZone.com in 1995 before it became ESPN.com. He was instrumental in creating many initiatives on the site, including Page 2, which featured writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Wiley and Bill Simmons.

He left ESPN six months ago, where he had been a longtime executive editor on the digital side.