If ESPN never did suspend Bruce Feldman for his role in Mike Leach’s new book, the timeliness of their response to reports citing the contrary would have been both swift and sufficient if Craig James were still rushing for the 1986 New England Patriots.
Commenting sixteen hours later in defense of a report that your side claims to be false seems pretty quick on paper, and when news actually did first break on paper it would’ve been. Only we don’t wait for the neighborhood kid to chuck a plastic bag filled with articles off his 10-speed onto our front porch anymore, nor do we huddle around the “tube” in anticipation of a regularly scheduled program like the ’86 Sportscenter for the latest sports information either.
For all their advancements in media since being founded in 1979, if nothing else, ESPN demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding this particular point in monumental fashion yesterday. As the #FreeBruce campaign on Twitter began to evoke memories of William Wallace and his crew with their faces all painted up way back in the day, ESPN sat silently for much too long. For sixteen hours ESPN employees, most with those four letters on display in their twitter handles, actively engaged in conversations seemingly oblivious to the trending topic they couldn’t help but be aware of. That’s not a good look for the worldwide leader in sports.
It is important though, in cases like this, to separate those we watch and read at ESPN from those standing on the corporate ladder’s top rung referred to as “they”. We don’t really know who the “they’s” are as consumers of ESPN’s products, but we assume that ”they” are people who wear suits, occupy the management offices in Bristol, and pound their fists on tables when announcing proclamations and corporate initiatives. We credit them and those initiatives as the reason nobody from ESPN was talking about Bruce Feldman from Thursday night and on through the better part of Friday, and we also assume that “they” put the muzzle on Feldman’s twitter account for that time period too.
There’s a number of different reasons why this particular story involving ESPN, an ESPN employee in Craig James, a football coach in Mike Leach who was fired after coaching Craig’s kid, and an ESPN reporter in Bruce Feldman who served as editor in a book about how that coach got fired are interesting. It’s also worth noting that Leach is suing ESPN, but none of that is anything I feel like weighing in on specifically. What captured my attention the most yesterday, as I followed this story, is how this continues to be another example of social media driving sports news in ways pre-existing media machines like ESPN can no longer keep up with.
Maybe back when Chris Berman had hair the company protocol at ESPN in response to a story like this was to gather at 9am in the conference room for a strategy session, send a couple faxes out to the legal team asking for direction, and requesting an employee like Feldman not comment publicly until a corporate statement can be issued. There’s no time for that anymore though. If ESPN didn’t suspend Feldman, they had about an hour to say as much by posting a statement to that effect on Twitter. If they did suspend him, they had that same window to say that too. There’s no more hiding in the corner acting like you haven’t heard what everybody else in the sports world is talking about anymore. Everybody has a smart phone these days, everybody downloaded the twitter app, and everybody is actively engaged in constant conversation about sports. As the worldwide leader in that department, this needs to be recognized, and responded to accordingly.
The momentum with which sports news and information is currently cycling through social mediums like Twitter is unprecedented. There’s no way ESPN or anybody else could’ve predicted as much way back in the day when they started, but they need to evolve and adapt to this ever-changing landscape both completely and immediately. There’s no picking and choosing, you’re either all-in or you’re not. It will continue to be an injustice to those reporters and personalities who serve under their umbrella, as well as sports fans who consume their product, if they do not understand this as an entity and react accordingly. Not to mention how less and less credible they will seem if they don’t, regardless of whatever statements they end up issuing whenever they get around to doing so.
