On Wednesday’s edition of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, the topic that was discussed in the first hour of the program was about how sports news is broken by some of the top insiders in the business. This was in response to the feature that was done in The Washington Post about Adam Schefter.
During the segment, Le Batard mentioned that he believes there is a lot of fear at ESPN. Plus, he believes that both Schefter and Woj have become bigger than ESPN itself:
“Does it matter to you in any way that Brian Windhorst is doing that meme thing of pointing for 2.5 minutes because it would appear that there is a culture of fear at ESPN where it’s got to be the reporting is Woj’s. Woj is our lead guy. Everyone fears Woj. Everyone fears disappointing Woj. Everyone fears running askew of Woj’s sources or preventing Woj from doing his job correctly.”
“There is no disputing that however it is Schefter and Woj get their information, they’ve become bigger than the network. That power can be abused if indeed it’s so that everyone is fearing so much. Windhorst, there’s not a story like Windhorst in the history of ESPN. Windhorst has been great at his job for 20 years. He’s very careful about how he reports his news and he makes sure that he’s got the proper context on it.”
In fact, Le Batard also said that information in this day and age in journalism has become currency and it has allowed Woj and Shams Charania from The Athletic and Stadium to be the two people that are mostly associated with breaking NBA news:
“Information is a currency like we’ve never seen before in this realm where Shams and Woj and whether someone wins by 43 seconds makes them the only 2 guys you think of in this sphere because somehow Woj, who does his job in a way that I’ve never understood. I’ve marveled at how that man could be that good at the acquisition of information and have wondered how he does that?”
However, in the opinion of Stugotz, there are not many who care how the information pops up or who is the one that gets to break the news first, he just cares about the actual news itself:
“I just want the information. I don’t care how the sausage is made. Just give me the information that’s important to me and give it to me as quickly as possible. In fact, I don’t even care about how quickly you give it to me. I don’t do the thing oh Woj got to it first, Shams got to it first. When it shows up in my timeline, whoever sent it out sent it out. I’m not comparing the two and I think most people who care about sports and the information and don’t care about how these people get their information, that’s all they care about.”
With that being said, let’s just say Stugotz had strong feelings about Woj towards the end of the segment based on something he used to see while he was at ESPN:
“I am tired of people being intimidated by you. I am tired of people being scared of you. I am tired of people walking around eggshells on the Bristol campus….You do not have a monopoly on NBA news. If other people want to report it, feel free to report it. I am tired and I felt this a bit when I was there of people walking on eggshells around Woj. They can’t report NBA news. Their jobs are to be reporters, to be journalists and they aren’t doing their jobs because Woj is getting in the way.”
