More Cuts at ESPN

One thing about ESPN losing veteran reporters with lots of sources. This will help the outlets who pick up said reporters much more than it will hurt ESPN. Less experienced cheaper reporters will still get any phone call they make returned because it's ESPN, not the individual, making the call. It's just like the New York Times. Subjects of stories WANT to respond to the institution covering them.

 

I think people do know. At least, people who want to learn more about the story will then click on Outlet Z.

 

Do consumers even care?

Once news breaks, everyone's favorite news source has it seconds/minutes later.

Most of the time, folks don't even know who broke the news.

Even here, we see people linking to rewrites of original news, because that's where folks first encountered it.

 

True, true and true, but if even a small percentage of viewers click to the original source material, the reporter is earning his/her dough for Outlet Z. First you get them in the door, etc.

 

I think podcasts and other on-demand services cannibalized sports television for the most diehard ESPN viewers. The convenience to listen to a podcast while you're doing mundane tasks like sitting in traffic or working at a desk scratches that itch for sports talk and information almost completely, for free, at your command. The consumer then has freed up time to do and watch other things during their free time. I do so many other things, watch so many different type of things in the evenings that used to be spent watching PTI and Sportscenter in the early 2000s. Now I can listen to Zach Lowe's podcast during my commute and I've heard what I want to hear for the day about the NBA. I can listen to Dan LeBatard's circus while sitting at my desk and I don't need to hear Uncle Tony and Mike argue at the dinner table anymore.

 

I think that's the question, and for ESPN, the answer is that they don't.

Monetizing online reporting is hard enough. With hundreds of clickbait, aggregating, outlets out there, posting stories that others reported, can outlets that spend money on reporting get a return on it?

At some point, I think it even becomes an ethical question for reporters.

Sure, the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed (and their sports counterparts) have actual reporters on the payroll, but they also cannibalize the work of others.

If it's a crime against the industry to work as a scab, because you're taking food out of the mouth of the person on strike, isn't working for one of these sites pretty damn similar?

 

We want so badly to believe news -- whether scoops or analysis -- has value.

I don't know how anyone can make that case these days, though.

 

Of course news has value. It is still a product people seek out, but the market has fragmented because of the ease of finding any outlet you wish around the world. How much value it has to ESPN is the specific question here, and while it does, it has much less value than their core product, live sports on TV.

 

Is that how Herm Edwards survived, you could plug him into every NFL conversation and he'll eat dead air without content in a cost effective manner?

Mark May was cut, I am surprised.

 

Its too bad Playboy went straight. I'd pay the cover price for the Girls Of ESPN

 

I don't know that that's true.

Strauss and Stark are two of my favorite writers of any kind, sports or otherwise.

I've never paid a dime or clicked on an ad to read either one. I don't know if I would.