ESPN’s field continues to shrink for PR and marketing pros.
The network on Friday shut down Grantland, the boutique (and favorite of writers) Website created by sports journalist Bill Simmons.
The closing comes a little more than a week after ESPN announced that it was cutting 300 jobs.
“We have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise,” ESPN said in a statement.
Grantland, which launched in 2011, featured long-form journalism that was in the mode of Red Smith, Dave Anderson and other writers who brought an intellectual flair to their sportswriting.
The writing was on the wall for Grantland when Simmons was let go last May. He was quickly scooped up by HBO, while several Grantland employees have followed him there, according to the New York Times.
ESPN appears to be focusing on its core programming and dialing back on personalities. In addition to Simmons, the company parted ways with Colin Cowherd, who hosted a popular show on ESPN Radio and is now with Fox Sports 1.
The various moves by ESPN present a double-edged sword for PR pros and communicators.
Despite the loss of some major talent, the ESPN brand remains a powerful one, with large tentacles spanning broadcast, online, print and mobile outlets.
But sometimes you like to pitch individual programmers and writers who aren’t necessarily caught up in a corporate bureaucracy and aren't protected by management layers making it difficult to contact them or build relationships.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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