ESPN's public editor wrote roughly one article per month. With output like that, it's not surprising the WorldWide Leader has decided to discontinue the position.
On Wednesday, ESPN announced it would not hire a new public editor. Jim Brady, who most recently occupied the job, wrote his last column in March. "In recent years, both the Washington Post and the New York Times eliminated their Ombudsman role in recognition that the position had outlived its usefulness, largely because of the rise of real-time feedback of all kinds," ESPN Senior Vice President Kevin Merida said in a statement.
Brady declined to appear on WEEI last year after some of ESPN's personalities accused Boston of being a racist city. Instead, he fought with listeners on Twitter.
That symbolizes the problem with ESPN's public editor role, or at least the way Brady handled it. While ESPN is the most heavily scrutinized company in sports media, he didn't weigh in on many issues.
But given Brady's propensity for social media meltdowns, maybe that was for the better. He received lots of blowback for taking ESPN's side when it decided to publicly admonish Jemele Hill last fall after she had called Donald Trump a "white supremacist" on Twitter. After hours of going back and forth with critics, Brady wound up deleting his tweet storm, and firing freelance writer Dave Lozo from a website he controls, because Lozo called him the "dumbest person alive."
Since ESPN's public editor was a virtual non-factor, losing the position isn't a big deal. But it's a shame that some of the most powerful media companies in the country don't have an in-house employee to hold them accountable. Twitter feedback, which is often reactionary, is not a replacement for trained journalists.
