Networks had to walk a fine line between player and story with Michael Sam, but as John Oliver showed, that’s progress

by Andrew Bucholtz | May 14, 2014

There were two vastly different themes in televised draft coverage of Michael Sam this weekend, Sam as a football player and Sam as the first openly gay NFL player. Both are legitimate angles, and deserving of coverage, but they led to a difficult line for ESPN and...

Networks had to walk a fine line between player and story with Michael Sam, but as John Oliver showed, that’s progress

by Andrew Bucholtz | May 14, 2014

There were two vastly different themes in televised draft coverage of Michael Sam this weekend, Sam as a football player and Sam as the first openly gay NFL player. Both are legitimate angles, and deserving of coverage, but they led to a difficult line for ESPN and...

Networks had to walk a fine line between player and story with Michael Sam, but as John Oliver showed, that’s progress

by Andrew Bucholtz | May 14, 2014

There were two vastly different themes in televised draft coverage of Michael Sam this weekend, Sam as a football player and Sam as the first openly gay NFL player. Both are legitimate angles, and deserving of coverage, but they led to a difficult line for ESPN and...

Raptors official blames ESPN for shot clock power outage

by Andrew Bucholtz | Apr 21, 2014

Much of the focus in Saturday’s Raptors-Nets playoff opener was on the malfunctioning shot clock in Toronto, which led to the clock eventually being replaced by a guy with a stopwatch and the P.A. announcer counting down the seconds. That (and general manager...

Personality driven sites bring Pandora approach to sports journalism

by Andrew Bucholtz | Mar 22, 2014

This week saw the long-awaited launch of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight as a part of ESPN, adding to that company’s investment in personality-branded sites. They already have Grantland, led by and based around Bill Simmons, and they’re reportedly...