ESPN Senior VP/Editorial, Print & Digital Media Rob King yesterday said that the net "will hire bloggers to cover every NFL team," according to Andrew Beaujon of POYNTER. Redskins beat writer John Keim yesterday announced that he was "leaving The Washington Post to cover the Redskins for ESPN, and news broke earlier this month that Mike Wells had left the Indianapolis Star." ESPN already has "local sites that cover sports" in N.Y., Chicago, Boston, Dallas and L.A., "as well as blogs that cover individual NFL conferences." King said, "Everyone’s staying on." King said that ESPN in total "planned 19 new hires ... and the network has decisions or offers out on all but three spots." Most of the operations "will be one-person, but they will be bolstered by editors and producers who will work to move these bloggers’ work across platforms." King said that the "idea is basically to give fans more content about the teams they obsess over." To "compound the threat" to daily newspapers, ESPN’s coverage will be "available for free, just as many local newspapers are embracing paywalls" (POYNTER.org, 7/29).
