ESPN’s Lindsay Czarniak (L) and Kevin Negandhi. (Joe Faraoni/ESPN Images)
ESPN has always strived to properly acknowledge where and from whom news stories originate. The company constantly reviews procedures and processes to keep up with the ever-changing media landscape and the revisions that follow are a reflection of that steadfast commitment.
“Attribution has been and remains vital to our users,” said ESPN Senior Vice President and Director of News, Vince Doria. “The context of where information comes from helps further establish the trust we have built in 33-plus years. These guidelines are part of our ongoing commitment to being as clear as we can in providing fans with the latest and most accurate information.” continue reading…
Thursday, ESPN launched its latest This Is SportsCenter ad, another spoof of life in the company’s cubicles and corridors.
In the new, 15-second spot, New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist — making his second TISC appearance this winter — forgets that it’s casual Friday.
His “co-workers” — SportsCenter anchors Lindsay Czarniak, Kevin Negandhi and John Buccigross — watch as Lundqvist waddles into the office in NHL gear.
ESPN’s Gerry Matalon. (Joe Faraoni / ESPN Images)
Listen closely to Czarniak’s dialogue and you’ll hear her reference an actual ESPN colleague who’s not seen in this particular spot, but he’s had a hand in many of the franchise’s commercials.
Among his many duties at ESPN, Matalon works with ESPN’s marketing team and the advertising agency behind the TISC series, W+K New York, to secure requested ESPN “talent” for the spots that usually also feature athletes, mascots and other celebrities.
Matalon credits Craig Bengtson, Vice President, SportsCenter, and his fellow Senior CPs for helping him determine SportsCenter anchor and analyst availability.
“And we have to look at when the athletes are coming in. If they’re coming in the morning and [the script calls for SportsCenter anchor] Steve Levy and he works at night,” Matalon said, “what do we do?
“If we have to have Steve Levy, do I have to take him off the 11 [p.m. ET SportsCenter]? Is that an option, is that the best thing for the show?”
The process can be complicated but “it’s a very cool partnership and one of the most rewarding projects I’ve worked on in my 25 years,” at ESPN, Matalon said.
He was touched by Czarniak’s mention of him in the ad-libbed conversation with Negandhi and Buccigross.
“I was really flattered. I didn’t know Lindsay was going to it,” Matalon said.
His high school lacrosse coach, the late George Baron, “used to call me GMat, and I use the moniker socially because he was really tough, really disciplined, and really pushed for excellence. . . The fact that she said that was cool. I’m hoping he catches on to that, even though he’s probably in heaven yelling at somebody else.”
“I didn’t even think about it. We were literally just improvising conversation about swapping schedules,” said Czarniak, who is making her SportsCentercommercial debut.
“GMat is such an institution here,” she said. “He’s a big reason I ended up at ESPN and it was my first thought that I would run the ‘schedule swap’ by GMat.”
Even though Matalon has worked closely with the commercial franchise, he’s appeared in just one of the spots.
In the mid-1990s sketch below featuring a debate about Roger Clemens’ fastball, Matalon is seated between bearded Vince Doria, ESPN Senior Vice President and Director of News, and former SportsCenter anchor Keith Olbermann. Former anchor Jack Edwards earns The Rocket’s wrath.
ICYMI: Highlights from the past week on Front Row
• ESPN’s Joe Tessitoreintroduced the four-legged Joe Tess, a three-year-old Dark Bay colt owned by his friends George Bolton and Barbara Banke. The horse makes his debut today at the Santa Anita race track in Southern California.
• ESPN Radio’s Mike Greenberg and his wife Stacy Greenberg introduced the main characters in Greenberg’s new book, All You Could Ask For, which will be released by William Morrow on April 2.
• ESPN college basketball analyst Bruce Pearlrecalls the 2008 tornado that hit downtown Atlanta during the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament at the Georgia Dome. The extreme weather events are the subject of the new SEC Storied documentary, Miracle 3.
• Coordinating producer Amy Rosenfeld and producer Chris Alexopoulosshared insights about their crews and coverage of the upcoming 18th season of MLS on ESPN.
Row of Four Our favorites from across ESPN over the past weekcontinue reading…
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This afternoon’s Outside the Lines (ESPN, 3 p.m. ET) hosted by Bob Ley represents the start of a collaboration between two of journalism’s most recognizable and respected brands.
In a piece reported by brothers, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, OTL and PBS’s FRONTLINE launch a joint project to investigate the ongoing story of concussions in the National Football League. (ESPN.com has posted accompanying stories from the duo here and from ESPN’s Senior Writer and Legal Analyst Lester Munson here.)
The year-long effort will examine the latest research on brain injuries and football, the impact on players and the NFL’s effort to deal with a crisis that threatens the long-term health and popularity of the sport.
“ESPN is a terrific partner for this investigation,” said FRONTLINE Deputy Executive Producer Raney Aronson. “They bring unmatched knowledge and experience examining the defining questions in American sports.”
Today’s OTL segment focuses on late Hall of Famer, Mike Webster, the former Pittsburgh Steelers center who was the first NFL player officially diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy — or “football brain disease.”
For years, the NFL repeatedly denied any link between head injuries in football and brain damage in players. But while its medical experts issued the denials, the NFL disability and pension board acknowledged that at least three players, including Webster, had cognitive impairment as a result of head injuries suffered in football and awarded the players benefits based on its findings. continue reading…
Front Row knows you have better things to do all weekend than check your social media feeds, so we do it for you.
Here, from the ESPN PR universe, are some of the Tweets, posts and other commentary you may have missed.
You can thank us later!
But first, some background information on tonight’s planned Monday Night Football halftime interviews with the presidential candidates:
Presidential candidates’ interviews nothing new to ESPN
In what has become a regular occurrence during recent presidential elections, both major party candidates are scheduled to appear on ESPN as the nation prepares to vote in Tuesday’s Presidential Election.
Pre-taped interviews with President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney, conducted by Chris Berman, will be aired during halftime of tonight’s Monday Night Football game (Philadelphia at New Orleans, 8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
According to ESPN Senior Vice President and Director of news, Vince Doria, this marks the second time the interviews have aired during MNF. Then-candidates Barack Obama and John McCain discussed sports topics with Berman on the eve of the 2008 election, at halftime of the Pittsburgh at Washington game (the Steelers won, 23-6).
In prior presidential election years, interviews with candidates had been conducted on the campaign trail, according to Doria.
“As most news entities have done when offered the opportunity to interview the presidentaial candidates, we thought it would be a good idea to do it in the past and this year as well,” Doria said. “Obviously we take a certain sports-related tact with it and we don’t focus on the typical issues of budgets or foreign policy. Our audience ins’t looking for those type of questions from us.”
The interviews with the candidates are slated to take place Monday afternoon and will then be edited into approximately three minute segments to air at halftime. continue reading…
FR:What led you to initially report the Fine allegations earlier this month?
Doria: For the first time we had a second alleged victim come forward to talk on the record about what he claimed had happened between he and Bernie Fine. Along with that, we had a source who indicated to us that the Syracuse Police and the University Police were discussing re-opening this investigation – which the Syracuse Police did do prior to our running the story. Those two pieces of information, coupled with what we already had from Bobby Davis and the tape we had, convinced us there was credibility to these allegations and so we went ahead and reported them.
FR:What makes this story particularly challenging journalistically?
Doria: This was originally brought to our attention in 2003. Bobby Davis was a young man who had a story involving a respected high profile assistant coach at Syracuse. A man with no previous track record of this kind of behavior. It was one man’s story. He offered us three people who, Davis said, could either corroborate his story or assert that they in fact had also been sexually assaulted by Bernie Fine. Those sources either told us that was not the case or would not talk with us.
Bobby Davis also supplied us with a tape recording he made. He made this tape recording without our involvement, we were not present when the tape was made. The tape purported to be a phone conversation between Bobby Davis and Laurie Fine, Bernie’s wife. On that tape, Laurie Fine talked in disparaging terms about her husband, Bernie Fine, and as prompted by Bobby’s conversations, discussed her beliefs and her suspicions that her husband had been involved in sexual episodes with young boys.
It was clearly a damning tape in terms of her characterization of her husband but much of it was her thinking and beliefs. She never directly acknowledged to have witnessed any of these actions first-hand. So based on that tape which we had not generated; which we had no real knowledge of how it was made and Bobby Davis’s story – which was one person with no corroboration – we felt in 2003 that the material we had did not meet the standards for reporting the story. This is consistent with how we have viewed these types of stories in the past.
FR:What was the basis for introducing the Bobby Davis/Laurie Fine audio tape 10 days after your initial report on the Fine allegations?continue reading…
