An excerpt on my latest column for Poynter:

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When The Players’ Tribune issued a release it had hired Kevin Durant as its new deputy publisher last week, it prompted the usual jokes on social media and elsewhere. USA Today even did a post noting that Kobe Bryant, who holds the title of editorial director for The Players’ Tribune, can’t be happy about Durant leapfrogging him.

“Well, these are honorary titles that suggest the athletes have a place in our company,” said Players’ Tribune editorial director Gary Hoenig. “We meant to explain them a little bit more jocularly—is that the word? We just haven’t gotten around to it. Kevin will have a role with us, but is he going to call and ask why we are spending so much on travel? I don’t think so.”

Hoenig, though, says the addition of Durant is yet another positive sign as The Players’ Tribune begins year two. Last October, Derek Jeter made the quick transition from shortstop to publisher by being the most visible presence at the unveiling of the new site. Jeter said the Players’ Tribune empowers athletes to tell stories in their own voices, allowing them to bypass the distortion created in today’s media environment.

Since then, Hoenig said more than 360 athletes have contributed their posts to The Players’ Tribune. He has been pleasantly surprised by how word of the site has circulated among athletes. That includes Durant, who has had his issues with the media.

“In the last six months, we’ve gotten a lot of unsolicited interest from athletes,” Hoenig said. “What’s interesting is that The Players’ Tribune is becoming an athletic community…Athletes see a role for themselves in terms of holding on to their own narrative. Kevin is interested in taking this business in that direction.”

My latest column for Poynter is on Ivan Maisel, who lost his son last winter.

First a personal note: My relationship with Ivan Maisel goes back to 1988 when I met him on the national college football beat. We spent many times together in various press boxes and at several golf courses on Fridays before games. Ask him about “Sherman’s 5-wood,” and I’m sure he won’t stop laughing.

Our golf games still suck, but Ivan has gone on to become one of the best and certainly most respected college football writers on the beat. Trust me, you won’t find a better person anywhere.

Like everyone else in the business, I was crushed when I heard the news about Ivan’s son, Max. Unthinkable. As friends, we all felt his pain.

After Ivan returned to work, the journalist in me thought about reaching out to do a column. As he would say, “It’s a good story.”

But as a friend, I thought I might be intruding on his privacy. I didn’t want to put him in awkward position.

However, a mutual friend suggested I reach out to Ivan. When I asked if he was up for an interview, he said yes.

I’m glad he did.

Here’s an excerpt from the column:

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Ivan Maisel had done many stories through the years about a player or coach returning to action after suffering the loss of a loved one. But this was different.

On Sept. 5, Maisel posted a piece on ESPN.com on Stanford’s Kevin Hogan. The quarterback has been coping with grief after his father died last December.

Maisel writes in the story, “The calendar isn’t always what ages us. It can be what happens along the way.”

Maisel was writing about Hogan, but the line also applies to him.

The story was one of the first Maisel did after returning to work following the death of his 21-year-old son, Max, in February. Hogan had been on the long-time college football reporter’s radar since last winter prior to what occurred with his son.

“I didn’t do the story as a grief exercise,” Maisel said. “I did it because it was a good story.”

Maisel talked with Hogan’s mother, Donna, who broke down during a phone interview. After they hung up, she was concerned about revealing such private feelings and asked Maisel if she could see the story before it was published. He declined the request, citing the old-age journalist standard about not providing sources with a sneak peak.

Maisel replied with a text:  “I told you that I had some sense of your loss, then turned around and told you my wife is taking our youngest to Stanford. No, I am not a widower. But we lost our 21-year-old son Max six months ago. I have learned that everyone grieves differently. But I didn’t hesitate to ask you about Jerry [Hogan’s late husband] because I now have a sense of what it means to ask, and to answer, and I am not afraid of the emotion in the answers. So I can promise you that I will treat what you said with respect.”

Donna Hogan sent back a text: “Oh my goodness, I didn’t know. You understand what grief is.”

After the story ran, Donna sent Maisel another text: “I’m sitting here in tears. You were right to tell me to trust you.”

“That was really gratifying to hear,” Maisel said.

Looking back, Maisel knows the impact of what happened to him affected how he reported the story. He says he was able to ask questions that “rounded off the edges.”

“My new-found sensitivity was a gift that I was able to plunk out the carnage of what Max left behind,” Maisel said. “The key for all of us is to hear the questions before we ask them. How will it sound to your subject’s ears so you can elicit the best responses? It took me way too long to figure that out.”

Excerpts from my latest column for Poynter.

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Filip Bondy started hearing rumblings last Wednesday that the New York Daily News was making massive cuts. Despite generating high-quality work during his 22 years on the sports staff, he knew everyone was vulnerable.

“I didn’t wait for the call,” Bondy said. “I called them and asked, ‘Am I still working there?’ [The person on the other end] said, ‘Well, actually…hold on.’”

Bondy, though, had concerns about more than himself. His son, Stefan, covers the Brooklyn Nets for the Daily News. So after Bondy was informed that he had been dismissed, he immediately asked about his son’s fate.

“When they said he was staying, it was a relief,” Bondy said. “He’s got a lot more years ahead of me than I do.”

However, Stefan now works for a much different sports staff. With the New York Daily News incurring heavy financial losses, the paper laid off 12 people in the department, including sports editor Teri Thompson. Bondy wasn’t the only recognizable byline to be let go. Other cuts included Hall of Fame baseball writer Bill Madden, Wayne Coffey, a terrific takeout writer and the author of several bestselling books, and Hank Gola, one of the top golf writers in the country in addition to his coverage of the NFL.

Coffey admitted he was “flabbergasted” when he received the call. “I didn’t think it would end this way after 30 years,” he said. “There’s an element of feeling like they ripped your heart out.”

Yet Coffey took some solace that he wasn’t alone.

“There’s a huge comfort if you look at the caliber of people they tossed out the door, some really strong people,” Coffey said. “It wasn’t just me. Unfortunately, it’s a reality of the business these days.”

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Gola, a 22-year veteran of the Daily News, proudly admits he is “an old-school dinosaur” who still thinks journalism is best served in a newspaper rather than on a website.

“There’s still something to holding a newspaper between your fingers,” Gola said. “That’s when our stories come alive. I don’t think you get the same feeling from a click. [Newspaper] websites don’t encourage reading. They just encourage you to click on a headline. You don’t even have to read the story for it to be measured as a hit. And that’s the judge of success these days.

“I’m glad I worked when it was still fun, and when stories still mattered.”

Yesterday, the ESPN Monday Night Football twitter feed issued this tweet.

If you click on the link, you will see a fast-moving slide-show of all the announcers, analysts and sideline reporters who have worked on Monday Night Football during the last 45 years. All except one person.

Thanks to reader Art for noticing that ESPN decided to omit O.J. Simpson. Back when he was better known for being a Hall of Fame running back, Simpson worked in the MNF booth from 1983-85.

Now that he is known more for something else, someone at ESPN decided not to tarnish this slide show with his image.

It would be one thing if other announcers were omitted. But there’s Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who was so terrible in 1974 he didn’t even make it to the regular season.

There’s Fran Tarkenton (1979-82), Dennis Miller (2000-01), and Tony Kornheiser (2006-08).

The slide show even includes Eric Dickerson (2000-01) and Lisa Guerrero (2003-04), who were memorably bad as sideline announcers.

Yet no O.J., who worked with Frank Gifford Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and Joe Namath during his three seasons in the booth.

Looks like a little revisionist history by ESPN here.

Bristol, CT – June 12, 2014 – Photo Studio: Portrait of Don Van Natta .(Photo by Joe Faraoni / ESPN Images)

Excerpts from my latest column for Poynter:

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This won’t come as good news for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the New England Patriots. Don Van Natta says there might be a Round 2 to last week’s big ESPN Magazine storyillustrating how Goodell used the penalties levied on the Patriots for “Deflategate” as a make-up call for being lenient on “Spygate” in 2008.

Van Natta, who co-wrote the story with Seth Wickersham, says they have received more than a dozen calls from various league sources since the story was released.

“When you do a story like this, you shake the tree and very ripe fruit falls into your lap,” Van Natta said. “There are some interesting leads that Seth and I are going to address. I don’t think we’re done with this just yet.

Van Natta wouldn’t divulge any details or give a timetable for the next installment. He did say a couple of the leads involved other teams, although the Patriots remain the main focus.

“We heard from people we didn’t even interview who were confirming the storylines in our piece,” Van Natta said. “It confirmed the anger and paranoia around the league about the Patriots.”

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Prior to coming to ESPN, Van Natta covered the White House, Pentagon, the CIA, and spent three years interviewing intelligence officers in Europe for the New York Times. He jokes that all of that experience proved to be “a good training ground” for doing investigative stories on the NFL.

“There is a code of silence in the NFL,” Van Natta said. “You can’t do a story like this without using anonymous sources.”

Van Natta says he and Wickersham try to get as many people to confirm every piece of information in the story. He said there were only couple instances where they had a high enough comfort level to go with one source.

“Every piece of information has to be bullet-proof,” Van Natta said. “On these kinds of stories, when you rely on a mix of on-the-record, documents and a vast majority of anonymous sources, you’ve got to get it right. I am not aware of one single fact in our story that wasn’t correct.”

An excerpt from my latest column for Poynter.

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The box score has been a staple of newspapers since the 1800s. Yet like everything else in the ever changing world of media, its future is precarious in print editions, as sports editors wrestle with diminishing space and resources. They also wonder if running the box scores is essential given their instant availability on a multitude of websites.

The Charlotte Observer, along with sister papers the Raleigh News & Observer and the Rock Hill Herald, took the step and eliminated the baseball scores from their print editions this year. Mike Persinger, the sports editor of the Charlotte Observer, said it was a move that had been discussed for the last 6 or 7 years.

“We always came away thinking, ‘It’s too soon,’” Persinger said.

However, budget cutbacks forced the papers to reconsider the decision this year. Persinger said the baseball box score page (which the three papers share) took a staffer four hours (a half-shift) to produce. The sports editors felt those resources could be used elsewhere.

“It was not an easy decision, but in some ways it was,” Persinger said. “Why were we running something that is widely available elsewhere? For most of our younger readers, if they care about the Red Sox, or want the latest on their fantasy team, they are going to get those statistics and box scores elsewhere and get them faster than they would in the newspaper.”

Excerpts of my latest column for Poynter:

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Under the heading any publicity is good publicity comes Nick Saban’s reaction to Monte Burke’s new biography on him, “Saban: The Making of a Coach.”

During a press conference in early August, the Alabama coach, without being asked, expressed his disapproval in Burke writing an unauthorized biography.

“I just want everybody to know that I’m opposed to an unauthorized biography; for anybody,” Saban said. “And I think that’s some person that you don’t even know trying to profit by your story. Or someone else’s story. And one of these days when I’m finished coaching at Alabama I’ll write an authorized book because you know there’s really only one expert on my life. And guess who that is. Me. And there won’t be any misinformation, there won’t be any false statements, there won’t be any hearsay, there won’t be any expert analysis from anybody else.”

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Burke had his own reaction to Saban’s comments. Unauthorized biographies are a staple in the industry. It is no different than a media outlet continuing to pursue a profile despite not receiving cooperation from the subject.

“The standard joke is that Saban doesn’t understand the economics of the publishing world,” Burke said. “I read thousands of stories on Saban and they weren’t authorized. Did Bob Woodward get Barack Obama’s permission to do books about him? No. Journalism is not done by permission.

“He might have a beef if a writer goes in with a certain agenda. That’s not fair. However, if you write a book that’s objective, it’s hard to have a beef.”

Bristol, CT – May 18, 2015 – Studio X: Scott Van Pelt on the set of SportsCenter
(Photo by Allen Kee / ESPN Images)

An excerpt from my latest column for Poynter:

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When ESPN approached Scott Van Pelt about going solo with the midnight (Eastern) edition of “SportsCenter,” he initially said no.

Van Pelt was the co-host of a popular midday radio show on the network, which gave him the opportunity to express his views about various issues in sports. Typically, “SportsCenter” hosts aren’t given as much latitude in that regard. It’s mainly scores and highlights.

“I pushed back,” Van Pelt said. “I loved the radio show where I had the ability to have an opinion. They came back to me and said, ‘No, we’re encouraging that [if he did the ‘SportsCenter’ show]. We want you to bring opinion to that space.’ That made it an incredibly compelling opportunity.”

As a result, Van Pelt said good-bye to his radio show in June. Since then, he has been gearing up for the Sept. 7 debut of his version “SportsCenter.”

The midnight show hasn’t been renamed “SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt,” but that is essentially the case. ESPN is looking to tap into Van Pelt’s unique voice and perspective in between the more traditional 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. editions of “SportsCenter.”

Rob King, ESPN’s senior vice president for “SportsCenter” and news, said Van Pelt will “place a new, entertaining stamp on the midnight ‘SportsCenter.’”

Indeed, it hasn’t been lost on Van Pelt that ESPN is giving him the keys to drive perhaps the coolest car in the lot.

“I’ll admit at times it is daunting when I think about it,” Van Pelt said. “But it’s also like the coach saying you’re going to start. Time to go out and play.”

An excerpt from my latest column for Poynter.org.

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When Mike Sherman of The Oklahoman served as the president of Associated Press Sports Editors in 2014-15, nobody wrote that he was the 39th man to hold that position.

However, there are numbers attached to Sherman’s successor. Each story dutifully notes that Mary Byrne is APSE’s third women president, and the first since 2000.

“I hate the fact that it’s still newsworthy,” Byrne said.

Byrne’s goal is to make it less newsworthy for the next wave of women in the business during what should be one of the most eventful and busiest periods of her career. Besides being inducted as APSE’s new president at its convention in San Diego in June, Byrne, the former USA Today’s managing editor for sports, also is in her early days at ESPN as its new senior deputy editor for NFL, NHL and NASCAR coverage.

“It’s been hectic,” said Byrne after apologizing for having to reschedule our interview.

Then again, her colleagues can’t recall many moments when it isn’t hectic for Byrne. Given her multi-tasking skills, it hardly is a surprise she rose to the top of her profession.

Byrne, though, struggles with the symbolism that comes with joining Sandra Bailey of the New York Times in 1992-93 and Tracy Dodds of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer in 1999-2000 as APSE presidents. She wishes she was the 13th, not the third.

“I would like to say it doesn’t matter, but it does,” Byrne said.

There is a premium for women having role models in male dominated businesses, sports and otherwise. Byrne said she was struck from hearing a story in the wake of Danica Patrick winning the pole position at the 2013 Daytona 500.

“After seeing that, Jeff Gordon’s daughter told him that she wanted to be a race car driver,” Byrne said. “And this was despite the fact that her father was one of the top drivers of all time. It made me look at it in a different way. If [young women] can see it, [they] can believe it.”

My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana.

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The smartest guy in the room doesn’t have a room—again.

Keith Olbermann did his final “Olbermann” show a few weeks ago on ESPN2. It was a quiet, amicable departure, which is somewhat of an upset given his history. He didn’t “napalm” any bridges as he did when he previously left ESPN.

ESPN termed it a “business decision.” The network determined Olbermann, with a hefty contract, wasn’t worth the ratings his show delivered.

There was speculation that Olbermann was let go because of his hard-line commentaries on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The NFL clearly is ESPN’s most important business partner. It’s not a good thing to make Roger and friends too upset.

However, if ESPN tried to put a muzzle on Olbermann regarding Goodell, I would be stunned if he didn’t shout that news from the rooftops of Bristol, such as they are. It would be a major blow to the network’s credibility as a sports news source.

Bottom line: While it might make life easier for ESPN president John Skipper in upcoming meetings with the commissioner, if keeping Olbermann made financial sense, he still would be at ESPN.

Finding an appropriate time slot for “Olbermann” likely led to its downfall. Initially, it started as a late-night experience, but too often the show was pre-empted and/or delayed by games. It is difficult to develop an audience that way. “Olbermann” eventually was moved to 5 p.m. on ESPN2. Maybe with more time, more viewers would have come aboard.

ESPN, though, said Olbermann’s time was up. That’s a shame because ESPN needs someone like him.

Olbermann has the talent that makes the rest of us in the business feel inferior. His commentaries always were biting, funny, and most definitely thought-provoking. He took ESPN down roads that it rarely traveled. In noting his departure, ESPN anchor Steve Levy issued this tweet: “1 man, 2 N’s… @KeithOlbermann – thank you #talent.”

Washington owner Daniel Snyder likely won’t miss Olbermann at ESPN. The controversy over the team’s nickname was a frequent subject for Olbermann. Here’s an excerpt from a commentary in June in which he ties in the debate over the Confederate flag in South Carolina.

“All of this happening when the name “Redskins” is effectively on trial in Virginia. All of this happening while we see that a symbol like a flag can not only evoke and encourage racism and violence and madness and murder and treason, but that it can do something even worse. It can represent evil. And represent genocide and the persecution and mockery of a group of people because of the color of their skin. And if a flag can do that, a football team name — beamed into our homes every day, to our headphones, our minds every day — it can represent the same kind of evil, the same kind of genocide, the same kind of persecution and mockery of a group of people because of the color of their skin. There is a good reason that Dan Snyder’s lawyer did not tell the judge “Redskins” isn’t offensive. That’s because it is. And he knows it.”

You won’t find that kind of writing or depth of perspective anywhere else at ESPN.

Wrote George M. Thomas of the Akron Beacon-Journal:

“He was to ESPN television what Bill Simmons was to ESPN.com in terms of heft. Intellectual. Certainly brilliant. And somehow he blended those things to create a unique experience — which was based on his political show at MSNBC — for sports fans who appreciated some layers to their sports.”

Tom Jones of the Tampa Bay Times:

“His lone-voice show was a nice departure from many of the multivoiced opinion shows on ESPN’s various platforms. And there were few things on television each day more interesting than Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” segment. It and he, for now, will be missed.”

Surely, Olbermann will land elsewhere. An election year is coming up, and he will have plenty to say on that front.

However, I also hope he finds a platform somewhere in sports. He has a unique passion for all things sports, and he clearly has plenty to say.

Olbermann’s voice is needed in sports. Too bad it won’t be at ESPN.