Rick Reilly to ESPN for $2M/year
A few teams are rich and getting richer, hunting more avidly than ever for talent, raiding the less-endowed leagues, poaching free agents and bidding the prices of star players to unheard-of heights.
But the high-paid objects of desire are not pitchers, running backs or point guards – they are sportswriters.
ESPN and Yahoo Sports are on a furious hiring binge, offering reporters and columnists more than they ever imagined they could make in journalism. ESPN, in particular, has gone after the biggest stars at newspapers and magazines, signing them for double and triple what they were earning – $150,000 to $350,000 a year for several writers, and far more for a select handful.
Some print publications, notably Sports Illustrated, have selectively tried to keep up with the lucrative ESPN and Yahoo offers, to retain some of their writers or attract new ones. But for the most part, newspapers, though they are being forced to raise some salaries, cannot keep up. Several say they are suffering through the worst talent drain their editors can recall.
“My counteroffer usually comes down to asking them what kind of cake they want at their goodbye party,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, assistant managing editor for sports at The Washington Post, which has lost three writers to ESPN in the last year and a half. “The numbers they throw around are out of reach.”
Uh, John – start writing more about college football!
I’m sure it’s mostly an ESPN show (this article). With Yahoo Sports a distant second. And the money comes from cable & dish fee revenues. Which ESPN merely jacks up, on threat of leaving (cable or dish) if they don’t get what they want (and still be classified as part of the “Basic Package”). And the provider, then passes the cost onto you and the advertisers. So essentially, YOU are paying for sports writers to leave print journals, and work for ESPN. Ah, for the future of Ala Carte cable and dish programming. Hopefully, a not too distant future, CONGRESS!
I don’t watch ESPN anymore, and rarely even go to the website. In fact, I am finding that I am not watching sports in general as much as I used to. It’s not necessarily because of lack of passion for sports but rather the lack of interest in the increasingly higher profile of the business side of it.
I don’t care to hear about how much these guys are making when, as Glenn E. said, the people paying those huge salaries are the fans and even the non-fans. It’s a damn shame my wife wouldn’t stand for me to cut cable TV out of our budget, or else I would be done with TV purely out of principle (and of course lack of interest).
I am a proponent of a la carte programming, bigtime. I would gladly pay a few dollars more per selected channel than to have to pay for channels that I never watch and would actually prefer not to give my money to.
So what is the problem? How many of these writers started and stayed with their newspaper from the beginning. There has always been a merit system where the best writers have been hired by the top print outlets such as the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Newsweek, and TIME. If they need to complain, then complain that they aren’t the top dogs anymore.
#1
“Ala Carte cable”
Somebody tried to explain to me once, that what the cable co.s do now is illegal, said it’s bundling and is the same thing Microsoft got into trouble with their media player and browser. I’m all for ala cart, I could easily pare back from approx 100 channels to say ten.
#3
“merit system where the best writers have been hired by the top print outlets”
Of course, isn’t that the John C. Dvorak story? 🙂
Most of the cable channels don’t get any money per subscriber. They are just in the packages as a bundle from the big media companies.Without being in the cable package for free, they would have no viewers and no ad money. It’s probably about 10 channels that charge anything at all.
#4 If they did that, then those 10 channels might cost more than than the 100 channels you get now. And it might also kill off some of the channels you like.