Would ESPN Benefit From Having A Full-Time, On-Site Ombudsman?
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Writer Wonders If ESPN Heeding
Ombudsman Schreiber's Advice |
On the heels of ESPN Ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber's latest column, in addition to previous commentary, "we've begun to wonder whether ESPN heeds her words, or whether ESPN simply tolerates them in order to create some rough but thoroughly incomplete sense that the network cares about what she has to say," according to Mike Florio of PRO FOOTBALL TALK. Schreiber began her role for ESPN in April '07, and her latest entry criticized the net's personnel for "becoming part of the news that the network covers." Florio writes ESPN should have an ombudsman "who has the ability, in real time, to call out the blunders promptly after they occur, so that those responsible can be held accountable for their errors before the incident inevitably and immediately fades into memory." Currently, ESPN employees "guilty of committing gaffes need to suffer through only a minor cringe-inducing moment that comes well after the relevant chapter in the responsible employee's life has ended" (PROFOOTBALLTALK.com, 1/15).
BOUND TO HAPPEN: SPORTS MEDIA JOURNAL's T.J. Donegan, in response to Schreiber's column, wrote while he agrees that "traditional journalists should stay out of the reflected light of their own coverage," when a company is "as big and as pervasive as ESPN is, that your personalities are not going to develop a certain air of celebrity in their own right" is unrealistic. It may not be "necessarily correct by traditional journalistic standards," but that "doesn't necessarily make it wrong all the time." However, as Schreiber "correctly points out, acknowledging and even feeding into that celebrity shouldn’t overshadow the real reason those personalities are there: to cover the game." ESPN "too often forgets that, which is often the source of frustration for its critics" (SPORTSMEDIAJOURNAL.com, 1/14).
VOICE OF CONCERN: ESPN last Wednesday swapped its NBA and college basketball announcing teams, and THE AD HALL wrote the move was "as obvious a case of the network thinking that people care more about who’s announcing a game than the game itself," and the "constant advertising for it was really over the top." Schreiber's column "doesn’t quite express most of our annoyances but at least it for once addresses them from within the umbrella of the ‘family of networks'" (THEADHALL.WORDPRESS.com, 1/14). FANGSBITES.com's Kenny Fang wrote, "No one watches games for the announcers, but ESPN wanted people to. Very bad" (FANGSBITES.com, 1/14).
A NEW QUEEN IN BRISTOL? THE BIG LEAD wrote, "How about giving Schreiber the keys to the ESPN Kingdom for a year? Just a hunch, but a lot of the folks riddled with ESPN fatigue might get over it real quick. Could she really be ESPN's penicillin?" (THEBIGLEAD.com, 1/13). LUKEKOHLER.com wrote of Schreiber, "Can we just start a campaign to put her in charge of the network now? You can't tell me she wouldn't make things better over there" (LUKEKOHLER.com, 1/14).
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