Around 30 freelancers who work on MASN's pre- and postgame Nationals and Orioles broadcasts "have been told that for now they are not receiving financial assistance from the network while the baseball season is delayed," according to Ben Strauss of the WASHINGTON POST. Sources said that another group of "at least 30 to 40 people who make up the game production crew -- camera workers and people in the production truck" -- also have been told that they "will receive no compensation for now, though this group is contracted by MASN through an outside company." The position "stands in contrast to those made by some other media companies who have made short-term commitments to their freelance staffs." For example, a spokesperson for NBC Sports Group, which owns a number of RSNs around the U.S., said that the company has been "paying its freelance production crews and will continue to do so for 'the upcoming weeks.'" Sinclair Broadcast Group is "extending interest-free loans of $2,500 to workers" at the roughly 20 RSNs it owns (WASHINGTON POST, 4/2).
TOUGH TIMES AHEAD: THE RINGER's Bryan Curtis wrote the next few months are "going to be a disastrous economic period for sportswriters," as this may be the "first economic crisis that singles out sportswriters for layoffs, pay cuts, or terminated freelance work." Some of the early signs are "incredibly grim." Baseball website FanGraphs "laid off more than 20 freelancers," and site Founder David Appelman "closed the longform site The Hardball Times, which was founded in 2004." The Athletic also "paused some freelance contracts," while N.Y.-based soccer magazine First Touch "suspended print publication." Newspaper layoffs have "claimed the jobs of everyone from the Penguins beat writer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to the sports editor at the Imperial Valley Press." There already were "plenty of forces bearing down on legacy media," but the coronavirus and the recession that could follow "have become their accelerants" (THERINGER.com, 3/30).
