Yahoo and ESPN use riches to lure sportswriters from print media
Money talks. Writers
walk.
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.”
The guy with the smile is Rick Reilly. He just left Sports Illustrated to go to ESPN - for $2M/year.
Posted: Tue - December 25, 2007 at 02:27 PM