Jason Whitlock has agreed to join Fox Sports, according to sources. The deal will give Whitlock a presence on TV in a late-afternoon timeslot on FS1. He also will have a presence on Fox Sports’ digital apps, sources said. Fox Sports would not comment. An announcement is expected as early as today, sources said. Last week, ESPN bought out Whitlock’s contract. He had been with ESPN for a little more than two years after being hired to head up "The Undefeated," a race-focused website that still has not launched. The move to Fox was engineered by former ESPN exec and current Fox Sports National Networks President Jamie Horowitz. Whitlock is scheduled to appear this afternoon on Fox Radio's "The Herd with Colin Cowherd" to talk about his latest career move (John Ourand, Staff Writer).
FULL-CIRCLE ENDING: Whitlock this morning posted his first entry on his new blog and writes he will "explain what transpired with me over the past two years at ESPN as I tried to launch a website." Whitlock: "There has been a plethora of long-form pieces written ... that have framed a highly negative narrative about me, the project and a group of talented journalists who bought into my dream." He added ESPN "required me not to respond to the avalanche of criticism" while he was still with the net, and he was "good with that." He wrote, "Why did I fail at The Undefeated? There are numerous reasons, including my foolish belief I could manage like a football coach. I learned there’s an art to corporate politics that I’m not good at. Another part of the answer is quite simple and rather obvious: 1) ESPN is cost-cutting, undergoing a significant cultural shift that has led to the departures of Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd, Keith Olbermann and yours truly; 2) If you believe the 2014 reporting of Robert Lipsyte, ESPN’s in-house ombudsman at the time, key ESPN executives disagreed with my vision to build a site as ambitious and well-funded as Grantland and FiveThirtyEight. The analysis of race and culture is far more difficult than the analysis of movies, burritos and numbers." Whitlock: "So why have I been portrayed in countless stories as the black plague of journalism? That’s the deeper explanation, and it begins with understanding the conversation I wanted The Undefeated to provoke among black people" (J.SCHOOL, 10/14).
