If you have 55 minutes to spare–and who doesn’t?–it is worth your time to check out Awful Announcing’s latest podcast with John Koblin.
Interviewed by AA’s Matt Yoder, Koblin talks about covering ESPN for Deadspin. At the top, Yoder tells Koblin to say hello to all the ESPN PR folks, who most definitely are listening.
Plenty of territory is covered here. From AA:
-His conversation with John Walsh and reaction to being put into the story himself.
-Thoughts on why it took that embarrassing episode for ESPN to finally correct the plagiarized stories.
-The importance in aggressively covering ESPN and the comparison to other media beats.
-The state of the Deadspin-ESPN relationship.
-ESPN President John Skipper’s comments about the network pulling back on its Tim Tebow coverage.
-The appeal of Skip Bayless within Bristol.
-Sourcing issues and controversies at ESPN.
-Whether or not the journalistic questions raised in the last year will ever effect the average ESPN viewer or ESPN brand.
-The modest progress ESPN has made in the last year and where the company goes from here.
Koblin makes some good thoughts, especially on ESPN reacting so slowly to the plagiarism problem. However, there were some points of disagreement for me.
I think the entire ESPN sourcing issue has been blown out of proportion. Nobody in this business is good at crediting sources, speaking as someone who didn’t receive credit for stories I broke through the years.
Koblin and Yoder failed to note that ESPN admitted it went overboard on its Tebow coverage months prior to network president John Skipper’s statements this week. Mark Gross, ESPN’s executive producer said back in September: “Some things work out, some things don’t. You sort of pick it up and move on to try something else the next day.”
Regarding the larger issue of Deadspin’s agenda when it comes to ESPN, Koblin makes some reasoned remarks about being fair with his coverage. Perhaps.
However, clearly there is a desire to highlight and magnify the network’s flaws. That’s what Deadspin does. Negative stories about ESPN leads to page views. I don’t think I’m breaking news here.
Yet having said all that, Koblin seems like an interesting sort. Worth your time if you have some.