All very fair. At least their baseball coverage still has Olney and Kirkjian, although it feels like they have stowed both of them away in the back closet. They are no longer functioning under the guise of being a reputable place for sports information, just space for sports entertainment.
You're asking all the right questions. This seems to indicate that they are not concerned about being known as the place for the best information, just for what they have deemed entertainment.
I have no real arguments with your point. As a person trying to ply my trade on Substack, I get the issues with the breaking up of the model into individual parts. The best we can hope for is that we can provide insight or quality in way that way that just isn't available on larger platforms now because they no longer prioritize that type of content.
If you think ESPN basketball coverage is bad, allow me to introduce the shadow of their baseball coverage. If it’s not football or betting, and especially betting on football, ESPN yawns. ESPN is now a sports betting company. To wit, try editing Favorites on the ESPN app. You can add or remove any team or sport but ESPN BET is an insidious sword in the stone.
Zach Lowe isn't the guy you fire. He has always been excellent, bright, and professional. Maybe ESPN should have deducted their contributions to the salaries of Kevin Porter Jr and Miles Bridges from the NBA TV contract and used it to pay Zach.
Is this why Won retired? Does ESPN really think they are better off with Kendrick Perkins?
Although on the whole, there is lots and lots of very high quality analysis on places like Substack. Unfortunately, casual fans don't have that kind of transition you mentioned or seeing it all in one place, and there will be reckoning: what I used to pay for one site and many writers now I'm expected to pay for a single writer?
The writers themselves either won't have the access that Lowe had and have to do everything as an observer, or they have to spend half their time promoting rather than writing, and holidays are spent working to keep the churn going.
All very fair. At least their baseball coverage still has Olney and Kirkjian, although it feels like they have stowed both of them away in the back closet. They are no longer functioning under the guise of being a reputable place for sports information, just space for sports entertainment.
You're asking all the right questions. This seems to indicate that they are not concerned about being known as the place for the best information, just for what they have deemed entertainment.
I have no real arguments with your point. As a person trying to ply my trade on Substack, I get the issues with the breaking up of the model into individual parts. The best we can hope for is that we can provide insight or quality in way that way that just isn't available on larger platforms now because they no longer prioritize that type of content.
If you think ESPN basketball coverage is bad, allow me to introduce the shadow of their baseball coverage. If it’s not football or betting, and especially betting on football, ESPN yawns. ESPN is now a sports betting company. To wit, try editing Favorites on the ESPN app. You can add or remove any team or sport but ESPN BET is an insidious sword in the stone.
Zach Lowe isn't the guy you fire. He has always been excellent, bright, and professional. Maybe ESPN should have deducted their contributions to the salaries of Kevin Porter Jr and Miles Bridges from the NBA TV contract and used it to pay Zach.
Is this why Won retired? Does ESPN really think they are better off with Kendrick Perkins?
Although on the whole, there is lots and lots of very high quality analysis on places like Substack. Unfortunately, casual fans don't have that kind of transition you mentioned or seeing it all in one place, and there will be reckoning: what I used to pay for one site and many writers now I'm expected to pay for a single writer?
The writers themselves either won't have the access that Lowe had and have to do everything as an observer, or they have to spend half their time promoting rather than writing, and holidays are spent working to keep the churn going.