These ESPN layoffs are heartbreaking
ESPN laying off around 100 people today has been devastating for me to follow as numerous sports journalists announce on Twitter that they are no longer employed.
I can't imagine how it must feel for those journalists, their colleagues, their friends and their families. It's an awful day, and many wonderful people lost their jobs because of a situation out of their control.
What hits hardest is that the sports journalists who lost their jobs today have been around me on Twitter for almost my whole high school career. Seeing people like Ethan Strauss drop a phenomenal Shoe Wars piece or Ed Werder tweet out dollops of juicy NFL gossip was the lifeblood of what got me through a mundane day in high school.
While this carnage is probably a result of ESPN letting politics seep into their coverage and the declining business of cable networks, that just doesn't matter right now.
What matters is 100 hard working people who all directly or indirectly contributed to me enjoying sports day in and day out are gone.
As an aspiring sports journalist still typing along for my high school paper, these layoffs of course sadden me, but they also drive me even more, knowing that I have to do even better and work even harder. It's certainly not going to be easy, but nothing great in life is.
I know most of these talented and professional sports journalists will all land on their feet, since they're too talented not to.
These layoffs however, foreshadow a dark future not exclusive to the sports industry in which the digital world is taking over. That clip of Russell Westbrook trash talking Patrick Beverly we all just saw on Twitter and House of Highlights? It probably just took someone's job who was paid to react to that on SportsCenter.
I got Twitter and it's pretty obvious there are some remaining personalities on ESPN that many people still want to see fired, but I really have no idea what went into these firings. For example, why was Ed Werder fired instead of fellow NFL reporter Josina Anderson? Beats me. Both are wonderful at their jobs and both report on the NFL and I really appreciate their tireless work ethics. We all have an idea of the monetary reasons ESPN is firing all these journalists left and right, but only ESPN knows why they made these particular personnel decisions.
I'm grateful to know I can drive back to school tomorrow knowing I have a wonderful, collaborative working environment with my fellow newspaper writers and that I can basically write about whatever sports I want without the fear of being fired, since it's high school.
But I won't be in high school forever, so I'll have to keep working and keep improving and keep writing. To all the people who lost their jobs today, I'm praying for you. I want to believe that once you work hard to earn a respectable job, you can keep it until you want to retire. Sadly, that's just not the reality of the world we live in anymore.
I can't imagine how it must feel for those journalists, their colleagues, their friends and their families. It's an awful day, and many wonderful people lost their jobs because of a situation out of their control.
What hits hardest is that the sports journalists who lost their jobs today have been around me on Twitter for almost my whole high school career. Seeing people like Ethan Strauss drop a phenomenal Shoe Wars piece or Ed Werder tweet out dollops of juicy NFL gossip was the lifeblood of what got me through a mundane day in high school.
While this carnage is probably a result of ESPN letting politics seep into their coverage and the declining business of cable networks, that just doesn't matter right now.
What matters is 100 hard working people who all directly or indirectly contributed to me enjoying sports day in and day out are gone.
As an aspiring sports journalist still typing along for my high school paper, these layoffs of course sadden me, but they also drive me even more, knowing that I have to do even better and work even harder. It's certainly not going to be easy, but nothing great in life is.
I know most of these talented and professional sports journalists will all land on their feet, since they're too talented not to.
These layoffs however, foreshadow a dark future not exclusive to the sports industry in which the digital world is taking over. That clip of Russell Westbrook trash talking Patrick Beverly we all just saw on Twitter and House of Highlights? It probably just took someone's job who was paid to react to that on SportsCenter.
I got Twitter and it's pretty obvious there are some remaining personalities on ESPN that many people still want to see fired, but I really have no idea what went into these firings. For example, why was Ed Werder fired instead of fellow NFL reporter Josina Anderson? Beats me. Both are wonderful at their jobs and both report on the NFL and I really appreciate their tireless work ethics. We all have an idea of the monetary reasons ESPN is firing all these journalists left and right, but only ESPN knows why they made these particular personnel decisions.
I'm grateful to know I can drive back to school tomorrow knowing I have a wonderful, collaborative working environment with my fellow newspaper writers and that I can basically write about whatever sports I want without the fear of being fired, since it's high school.
But I won't be in high school forever, so I'll have to keep working and keep improving and keep writing. To all the people who lost their jobs today, I'm praying for you. I want to believe that once you work hard to earn a respectable job, you can keep it until you want to retire. Sadly, that's just not the reality of the world we live in anymore.
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