ESPN reportedly hiring beat writers for all 32 teams

http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2013/06/10/espn-com-is-hiring-beat-writers-for-every-nfl-team/

 

Wouldn't surprise me. They've gone nuts over the NFL at the expense of other stuff.

 

Would be good to know if these are full-time positions or glorified stringers.

 

The NFL is the only sport where they could even begin to justify this...

It's still not necessary. If they do what CBS did and pay 32 people $400 a week for 20 weeks, it's cheap enough to justify. I don't see them hiring 32 people at a real salary, even if they're still technically freelancers...

 

Cleveland already has an ESPN-affiliated radio station that bills itself as ESPN 850. They have their own Browns beat reporter. Why wouldn't he just become the ESPN beat reporter and post his stuff on ESPN.com first?

 

And they also have several regional sites (ESPN Chicago, ESPN New York) that have people who already cover those teams. I'd also imagine the divisional bloggers have some experience covering one of the teams in the division they're assigned to. (Does this move mean no more divisional bloggers?)

 

A couple of the divisional bloggers just signed new contracts.

 

ESPN has something like six guys covering the Cowboys in some way or another (including columnists).

 

I'm told salaries and benefits for all 32 positions..

This will be fucking nuts... Since I'm guessing ESPN will poach writers from papers in most situations, there will be a lot of papers scrambling to hire writers right before the season...

 

Is there much overlap between the broadcast arm and the online staff? I haven't noticed too much.

What Predictor, Boston and Mizzou said is valid.... they already have a lot of resources in place in quite a few NFL markets. They might need to bulk up in a few cities, but it's not like they'd be starting from scratch if they don't want to.

And, as Mizzou pointed out, they could probably get by with stringers who work a lot from July-January and not much the other part of the year. That seems to be a trend that makes good economic sense from a hiring standpoint.

 

Isn't that what they did with some of the college positions? Go after beat guys from various dailies who already lived in the area and had connections?

If that's the case, I wonder is working for ESPN.com really better than a major daily? Is the money better or just more exposure? (Of course, in this day, anyone can access just about any site from anywhere, so you can work for the Tuscaloosa News and have your stuff read all over the world, just like ESPN.com).

 

If they pay anything close to what they did for the lowest-paid college bloggers ($80K), it's safe to say there will be a mass exodus.