With Fox Sports shifting the "focus of their website away from writing" to focus on video content, MLB reporter Ken Rosenthal over the weekend "promoted three videos" on his Twitter account, and it is unclear when his next column will come, if at all, according to Kyle Koster of THE BIG LEAD. Rosenthal last week was "asked if he’d published his last piece at Fox Sports," and he "didn’t have an answer." But as baseball "heads into its most active month with the trade deadline approaching, unfettered access to one of the game’s most tapped-in reporters would seem like a plus." Rosenthal on Twitter this morning denied he was retiring from writing, saying he will hopefully "resume soon." He also thanked his long-time readership in the tweet. So far there has been "no official announcement by either Rosenthal or Fox Sports that his columns will no longer appear on the site," and "there’s a possibility that they’ll return to the platform" (THEBIGLEAD.com, 7/3). Meanwhile, former FoxSports.com writer Bruce Feldman on Monday tweeted he is joining SI this week "to write about college football" (TWITTER.com, 7/3).
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU: In L.A., Tom Hoffarth noted the written word "doesn’t matter much any longer in the Fox Sports sandbox." When it came out last week that "nearly two dozen writers and editors were officially dead to them ... new life was given" to Fox Sports National Networks President Jamie Horowitz' vision. Horowitz is "all about repurposing video clips from the undisputedly loutish FS1 chat shows he created and staffed." Hoffarth cited former FS1 employees as saying that "it’s been a mess at their former Century City offices since" Fox Sports President & COO Eric Shanks "oddly bet the house on Horowitz a few years ago to at least take care of the cable and digital presence" (DAILYNEWS.com, 7/1). THE RINGER's Bryan Curtis writes the reason sports companies are pivoting to video is "simple: The web has a surplus of copy versus advertising." Companies have "decided that sticking an ad at the front of a video makes it less ignorable than putting a similar ad next to an article," and it "doesn’t matter what the video is." The pivot to video "stokes a longstanding existential fear among print journalists: What if writing is now the most important, but third-most-lucrative thing you can do for your media company?" Curtis: "What if writing, full stop, isn’t a job anymore?" (THERINGER.com, 7/3).
