Important journalism ends up on cutting room floor at ESPN
Look in the mirror, Sports America. We are not Red Smith. We are Stephen A. Smith. We are aroused by the scream and entertained by the shout. We are not inspired by reasoned discourse, nor much interested in cold fact. We are stimulated by hot takes.
There was a seismic shake Wednesday about 20 miles west of Hartford, Conn. The grim weight of layoffs dropped hard on as many 100 on-air and online employees at ESPN. Highly valued people in our profession got terrible news.
If they are honest with themselves, those in charge of making those decisions at ESPN would also look in the mirror and admit they, too, are shaken by what the sports media has become and what they have helped make it become.
Faced with the double gut-punch of lost subscribers and burgeoning broadcast right fees, ESPN had difficult decisions to make. In too many cases, ESPN did not choose the better angels of reportorial endeavor.
As a result, the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports is less of a leader today. Sports journalism is not better today. And if you totaled all the salaries cut, you have to wonder what ESPN bought beyond more time for itself with investors. ESPN didn’t buy more quality. That much is sure.
Brett McMurphy, a predominant voice on collegiate athletics, gone. Dana O’Neil, one of the important college basketball writers in America, gone. Jayson Stark, whose reporting and analysis has been at the heartbeat of baseball, gone. Late word Thursday was that college basketball centerpiece Andy Katz, who once worked at the Albuquerque Journal, is gone.
Scott Burnside, Pierre LeBrun, Joe McDonald, ESPN blew up its NHL coverage into a million ice shards. Ed Werder, Jane McManus, the names go and on and on … too much sports reporting, unearthing nuggets of fact and polishing those nuggets into coherent reporting and analysis, was sacrificed. Yes, many knew this cruel day was coming and still it was crueler than expected.
Too many screamers and preeners survived. Too many substantive reporters did not. Yet as disappointing as that is, all of the weight cannot be placed at the highly guarded gates of the sports monolith in Bristol.
Look in the mirror, Sports America. We are not driven by the pursuit of objectivity or the nuanced greatness of a Red Smith, whose commentary once graced the New York Times. Too many of us are driven by the force of personality and the ear-ringing staccato of alleged “debate.”
Turn to CNN or MSNBC or Fox any given evening. The formats that carry the ratings are cult-of-personality performance at best and ugly shoutfests at worst. If ever sports reflected society, it was Wednesday.
Have my expectations of ESPN been high over the years? Absolutely. When I called “SportsCenter” our nation’s sports page, I meant it. When I called Bob Ley the Ted Koppel of Sports, I meant it. As the power of printed newspapers lessened over the years and layoffs hit hard at sports staffs, ESPN took on more journalistic responsibility. The folks in Bristol seemed to relish the duty. Make no mistake, “Outside the Lines” and “E:60” and “30 for 30” have produced tremendous quality and ESPN will continue to find more platforms through apps, etc., for its best work in the months ahead.
Yet it went beyond the most honored work that took weeks and months of planning. ESPN went into various markets and lifted the local competition. ESPN reporters filled various sports and lifted the journalism. Whether it is through elbow grease, superior personnel or business-partner connections to gain access to teams and schools that ordinary reporters cannot, ESPN breaks news. ESPN will continue to break news. But take this to the bank, as of Wednesday, ESPN will not break as much news nor will it produce as much layered analysis as it did.
Maybe ESPN can no longer be all things to all people. Maybe those days are over. As crazy as the people who claim a liberal bent by ESPN is royally costing the company, it certainly is not crazy to recognize it is being squeezed on both sides of the financial ledger.
In this era of cord-cutting, ESPN’s number of subscribers has dropped from 99 million to 88 million since 2013. With ESPN costing each cable and satellite subscriber $7 a month, that’s obviously huge lost revenue. Millions are turning to the internet and their phones.
At the same time, ESPN is locked into mammoth broadcast deals. There’s $15.2 billion over 10 years with the NFL. There’s $12 billion over nine with the NBA. There’s $7.3 billion for college football. There are more and, well, we can understand why ESPN didn’t jump willynilly into a Big 12 expansion package.
ESPN laid off about 300 off-camera people in 2015. It obviously wasn’t enough to satisfy parent Disney. All those numbers certainly don’t mean ESPN is going down the drain. ESPN will remain a giant. Yet it’s also impossible at this point to imagine the 100 layoffs Wednesday are more than a temporary solution. A cold-blooded, temporary solution.
With Disney getting involved, there is a subscription streaming service coming. Maybe there will be some renegotiation of broadcast contracts or ESPN partnering with other entities. There was a preliminary report Wednesday that ESPN may share some product with MLB Network.
Eventually ESPN figures to regain its ballast. The horrible part of this story is that so many fine sports journalists lost jobs. That part of the story isn’t going away. And neither is Stephen A. Smith’s $3.5 million contract.