Three recently departed ESPN employees -- Bruce Feldman, Pat Forde and Amy K. Nelson -- sat for recent episode of the “Inside Sports Illustrated with Richard Deitsch” podcast and discussed the differences between working for ESPN and their current employers. Feldman, who joined CBSSports.com before the start of the college football season, talked about the difference between reporting for ESPN as opposed to CBS when a big story breaks. He said, “At CBS, I feel like we are very proactive, we’re not sitting back and waiting. ... From where I was at ESPN before, I felt like you really had to wait until you were cleared to go into action or do something." Feldman added, "I felt like you were walking on eggshells a lot.” Forde left ESPN in November to join Yahoo Sports, and he said, “There’s a just greater flexibility, there’s a greater proactive mindset at Yahoo.” He added, “In terms of manpower, ESPN can be wherever it wants. But they’re very formatted in trying to cover the basics of what happens on the field, on the court and do a good job of it. But sometimes that lack of flexibility to move around and do other stuff I think inhibits them to deal with breaking news, to deal with big picture stuff, to deal with controversial stuff.” Nelson joined SB Nation last month and said, “I had definite fear for even re-tweeting someone else’s information or trying to try to sort of spin it forward without making sure that our desk at least had put something out on ESPN.com first, and sometimes that would take forever.” Feldman noted a friend still at ESPN talked to him about one of Feldman’s tweets that broke a story and said, “If I re-tweet that, I’ll get fired.” Feldman: “That aspect of it, where they can’t acknowledge it unless somebody at ESPN’s fingerprints are on it, is frustrating.”
GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: Feldman said it is a “frustrating dynamic” not citing other sportswriters at ESPN. Feldman: “I’m sure that there were a lot of times where when you’re the ESPN guy, it’s embarrassing for you when your company operates that way. I have friends who are still there and some of them have a lot more pull than others, but some of them will acknowledge it online and some of them are scared to death to acknowledge anybody else online.” Deitsch noted several Yahoo writers have complained to him that they have not been credited for stories they have broken on ESPN. He said, “Their perception is that ESPN will, once the story is out there, will flood the zone and then try to control the story based on like the number of troops they have there and sort of the breadth of coverage that they can do. You overwhelm the story enough and then the viewer believes it’s your story” (“Inside Sports Illustrated with Richard Deitsch,” SI.com, 12/14). Nelson Friday wrote on her Twitter account, "hey @sbjsbd my quote on @richarddeitsch's podcast in ur story didn't include part praising ESPN & newsdesk #outofcontext #feellikeanathlete."
ESPN RESPONSE: The podcast comes after a stretch where ESPN has been praised for its journalism efforts, an ESPN spokesperson said. He pointed to the scandals at Syracuse and the AAU that ESPN broke. He also pointed to recent editorial hires, including multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Don Van Natta from the N.Y. Times. Van Natta will be a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. "It's time to move on," said ESPN VP/Communications Mike Soltys. "We appreciate their collective contributions to our success but prefer to focus our attention on the feedback from scores of journalists we employ who make us better every day" (THE DAILY).
