Jeff Passan joining ESPN

[John B. Foster]

 

[typefitter]

Goes without saying, but Jeff's a great get for ESPN.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

Agreed. He's excellent. Dogged reporter.

 

[typefitter]

Agreed. He's excellent. Dogged reporter.

He's that rare beast who can report the **** out of a breaking story, but he also writes well enough to carry a deeper dive. I feel like more often you get one or the other. He's both.

 

[CD Boogie]

I expected this move like a decade ago. Great talent.

 

[Songbird]

Jason Segel plays him in the movie.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Jeff is a great get for ESPN.

The business angle of this is very interesting. The narrative the last 3-4 years was that cord cutters were causing The Mouse to bleed money and they were being forced to shed talent. Did something change?

 

[WriteThinking]

There used to be destination papers, and personal-favorite companies where journalists aimed to go. Are there that many places for well-known writers to join, where they would want to go, anymore? I feel like, for almost anyone left in the business, ESPN is practically the only "destination" now, any and all the online stuff going on notwithstanding.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

Interestingly, Passan tweeted he was happy his stuff wouldn't be behind a paywall.

 

[thizzellewashington]

I wonder if he'll still get to write columns with more analysis, or will he stick to straight-ahead breaking news like Woj has since he jumped from ESPN to Yahoo? That seems to be ESPN's MO lately.

Either way, good for Jeff. One of if not the best baseball writers doing it.

 

[playthrough]

Jeff is a great get for ESPN.

The business angle of this is very interesting. The narrative the last 3-4 years was that cord cutters were causing The Mouse to bleed money and they were being forced to shed talent. Did something change?

ESPN's not unlike any other business that will claim losses and cut staff in one department yet spend money and hire in another. After this past Nascar season ESPN cut Bob Pockrass, who in my opinion is one of the very best reporters on anything anywhere. But it's Nascar, which is dropping like a stone and has no ties to ESPN. So that was an easy spot to cut a salary.

 

[BartonK]

I'm amazed that Yahoo Sports is even still a thing. Does it get traffic from its fantasy websites, which are sort of grandfathered in for a lot of guys in their 30s and up? (I know a guy who's been in the same Yahoo fantasy baseball league with his college buddies since 1999 or 2000)

 

[forever_town]

I'm very happy Jeff Passan's at ESPN now. I really enjoyed his work at Yahoo!

 

[typefitter]

Interestingly, Passan tweeted he was happy his stuff wouldn't be behind a paywall.

It's one of the things that makes me a little skeptical about The Athletic as a destination. Some of those guys will go from a million readers to the tens of thousands. You can tell yourself that doesn't matter, and I imagine lots of guys don't care so long as the cheques cash. But some writers want to be read.

 

[Tweener]

Don’t kid yourself — all writers want to be widely read.

You bring up a good point, though. At a time when journos are hyper focused on building their brand, it is somewhat surprising that so many are willing to go behind a hard paywall with far fewer readers than before.

But hey, if you can work remotely, don’t have to write on deadline and the money is right, maybe that’s more important. I can’t say I disagree with that.

 

[Pilot]

Late to the praise party, but agreed on Jeff. I’ve only worked around him a few times but seeing the way he really drills in an interview stuck with me. He just goes deeper and deeper and deeper, long after my instinct would have told me “good enough. And he finds something cool no one else knew.

Too dumb to ever introduce myself, but I definitely learned something.