ESPN will hire bloggers to cover every NFL team, Rob King confirmed by phone Monday afternoon. If youre going to place a bet anywhere, place it on the NFL, said King, ESPNs senior vice president for content, digital & print media.
Jason McIntyre reported last June that ESPN planned the hires, but ESPN wouldnt comment. Monday John Keim announced he was leaving The Washington Post to cover the Redskins for ESPN, and news broke earlier this month that Mike Wells had left the Indianapolis Star for the sports giant.
ESPN already has local sites that cover sports in New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles, as well as blogs that cover individual NFL conferences. Everyones staying on, said King, who is a member of Poynters National Advisory Board. All in all, ESPN planned 19 new hires, King said, and the network has decisions or offers out on all but three spots.
Most of the operations will be one-person, but they will be bolstered by editors and producers who will work to move these bloggers work across platforms. ESPN has an editing system that encourages sharing, he said. By way of example, he said he has every expectation that Keim, whose job will involve covering Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, will be seen across a number of platforms across the year.
Our hope is that it will be there during the preseason, King said of ESPNs NFL team. But, he added, theres a remote possibility we wont have all 32 on Day One of the season. ESPN launched its Boston site in September 2009, and the late start didnt hurt, King said.
The idea is basically to give fans more content about the teams they obsess over, King said. ESPN.com Editor-in-Chief Patrick Stiegman looked at the sites data for how much time users spent on the top 100 teams it covered. Of the 32 teams at the top of that list, 31 were NFL teams.
The Jacksonville Jaguars were the only NFL team that didnt make that list, King said, but he said ESPN decided to cover all the teams anyway. Had ESPN made a selective foray into more intense local coverage last year a move he said it considered it might have skipped covering the Indianapolis Colts, he said. We would have been absolutely wrong, he said, citing Andrew Lucks fantastic 2012 and coach Chuck Paganos battle with cancer. Whos to say they couldnt have an incredible season? King said of the Jaguars.