Jen Chang leaving SI

Grant Wahl posted on his Facebook feed that SI soccer editor Jen Chang is leaving the magazine to become Liverpool FC's new director of communications. It's also up on Liverpool's website: http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/latest-news/jen-chang-joins-liverpool-fc.

 

Better fit. Always seemed a little odd than an American magazine site devoted so much of its efforts toward covering the game in Europe and a lot less toward covering it in the USA. Tough to compete with Soccernet, which actually was an English company in its pre-ESPN days and still has that reach.

 

As opposed to ESPN and Fox, who ... also devote much more of their efforts toward covering the game in Europe?

 

Holy crap. I worked (in passing) with Jen at ESPN and didn't even know he'd gone to SI.

Good on him. I'm sure he'll love it.

 

Again -- Soccernet was originally an English company.

And both ESPN and Fox have broadcast rights to European soccer. SI does not.

 

Well . . . If you can't say anything nice . . . .

Let's just say this isn't a massive loss for soccer journalism.

 

To be honest, I read the thread title and thought it was about a hot asian woman. I'm more disappointed than Estelle Costanza.

 

Jen Chang leaving SI? Wow. One question: Who is this person? Never heard of him or her until I stumbled across this thread.

 

Hey now -- we don't go into the "Smith leaves Smalltown News" threads and ask who Smith is.

 

Soccernet's origins are irrelevant to my point, which is that European soccer (and Mexican soccer) is more popular than MLS among American fans. If you want to drive traffic to your site, or pull decent TV ratings, you're more likely to do it with EPL coverage than you are MLS coverage.

 

But Soccernet/ESPN and Fox have unique things to add to our understanding of the EPL. SI, apart from the occasional story in which they send Grant Wahl overseas, does not. And it's simply not a logical place in which you'd look for EPL coverage, particularly online. No one says, "Hey, I'd like to read about Arsenal. Rather than check out any sites in England or the American broadcasters' sites, let's see what an American magazine's site has to say."

Also -- EPL is more popular in the U.S., but not THAT much more popular. The trouble for MLS is that they're competing with *everything* -- EPL, La Liga, Mexico, etc.