It was not long after ESPN named Jim Brady its first “public editor” last week that one segment of the public took note of his Twitter feed.
His header featured a large Mets logo, and his posts included many comments about the Jets.
No surprise for a former Newsday paperboy and former Newsday sports intern who grew up in Huntington.
But some fans of the Patriots — a team that has generated more than its share of controversy — wondered whether he could be objective as he prepared to start his new job Sunday. (Even if he does happen to have a catchy last name.)
Brady, 48, mostly laughed off such feedback, and said he has nothing to hide even if his new job involves explaining and sometimes critiquing the Worldwide Leader in a role formerly was known as “ombudsman.”
“I went to every Jets home game from 1974 to ’85, before I went to college, so the roots are pretty deep on that,” he said. “Also, it’s an era of transparency. I’m not trying to hide who my sports teams are.
“It is funny because people were saying, oh, why didn’t you go in and clean up your Twitter feed? It’s because anybody who knows me knows where my sports loyalties are. I could wipe out my entire Twitter feed and it would not make much of a difference. People might as well know going in these are the teams I like.
“Separating your job and your sports fandom is not nearly as complicated as people make it out to be. It’s the job I chose, to be a journalist, and to keep any kind of a reputation in this business you have to view that part of it through a different prism from rooting for your team.
“If you’re an EMT in Boston and you’re a diehard Patriots fan and they call you to rescue some guy’s life who had a heart attack and he’s wearing a Jets jersey, I assume you are going to save him. At some level you have a professional responsibility to the craft that you choose.
“It’s been fun to read my Twitter feed the last couple of days and see all the anatomically impossible things people are suggesting I do to myself. So that’s fine.”
Brady noted sports fans usually distrust those who hide or waver in their loyalties more than they do fans of teams that are rivals of their own.
“Messing with sports loyalties is a dangerous place to go,” he said. “I think people respect that. My Twitter feed is very much stream-of-consciousness, smart — Jets comments. There’s no point in hiding who you are. It’s part of the deal.”
Brady’s term expires in 18 months. ESPN instituted the role of ombudsman in 2005 by hiring former Washington Post sports editor George Solomon — a former boss of Brady. There has been an 11-month gap since Robert Lipsyte left the job, during which it was renamed and re-imagined. Brady will be free to critique, but he also wants to explain.
“I think it’s finding more of a middle ground between the two,” he said. “It’s not saying critiquing and being a critic is not part of the job. It absolutely is. But it’s also trying to explain things that might not be burning at that moment.
“There may be times in which you want to review, OK, what are ESPN’s social media strategies? Do they break news on Twitter? When something goes awry on Twitter, how do they deal with that? That might not be prompted by a specific thing. It might be some things that are more thematic that might not be triggered by something live.
“It’s still dipping into the big issues like (the closing of the website) Grantland, the relationships with leagues and all that. So it’s probably turning the dial back a little bit more to the middle where it’s more explanatory.
“Why did this happen or not happen sometimes is a really interesting question. And it doesn’t always have to be on a controversy. It could be about sports that folks think should be covered, and maybe there’s a reason why they’re not. Maybe it’s a rights issue.
“They have a lot of years of history of understanding that the audience for this while loyal is not big enough to sustain a business. Whatever it is. But I think sometimes those deserve answers, too, and what I’m trying to find is a middle ground.”
Brady has not set a schedule for how frequently he will weigh in with pieces on ESPN.com, but he is expected to do so more regularly — and probably at shorter lengths — than some of his predecessors.
Brady graduated from Huntington High in 1985, attended American University in Washington, D.C., and returned to Long Island as a Newsday sports intern in the summer of ’89.
In the mid-1990s he oversaw first sports and later all news at the Washington Post’s digital arm and has worked on the digital side of journalism ever since, including at AOL. His current venture, BillyPenn.com, seeks to provide local news digitally, with younger consumers — and their mobile devices — a key target audience.
Philadelphia was the first market chosen in part because of its recent influx of millennials. The goal is to expand into other markets over time.
Brady is the first individual ombudsman/public editor who will juggle that with a full-time job, someone who is in the business trenches himself. That was part of the appeal for ESPN.
“I think that informs nicely because a lot of what you do day-to-day you’re seeing the same challenges (at ESPN), obviously on a greatly different scale,” he said.
One of the challenges is dealing with the magnitude of ESPN’s reach and diversity.
“I’ve worked at some pretty big places but nothing that publishes on this many platforms and has so much of a television presence, and clearly that’s what I have to bone up on,” he said. “My weakness is I don’t have a massive amount of experience in broadcast. Very little, in fact, so it’s a pretty daunting task.”
Still, there are standards that should cut across all divisions, Brady said. “It’s, how do you maintain across all of that, how to maintain the ethics and the consistency, and that’s I think the challenge everybody’s facing now. But they may be facing it on a bigger scale than most.”
To read the rest of the story visit Newsday where it was originally published
Jason Barrett is the President and Founder of Barrett Media since the company was created in September 2015. Prior to its arrival, JB served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco, and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He also spent time programming SportsTalk 950 in Philadelphia, 590 The Fan KFNS in St. Louis, and ESPN 1340/1390 in Poughkeepsie, NY. Jason also worked on-air and behind the scenes in local radio at 101.5 WPDH, WTBQ 1110AM, and WPYX 106.5. He also spent two years on the national stage, producing radio shows for ESPN Radio in Bristol, CT. Among them included the Dan Patrick Show, and GameNight.
You can find JB on Twitter @SportsRadioPD. He’s also reachable by email at Jason@BarrettMedia.com.
