Re: ESPN and @awfulannouncing: I often hear from ESPN management and its PR staff that we now live in a sports media era where reporters and critics no longer call them as frequently for clarity, context and equal time -- a tweet-first, get-clarity-later culture. Like everything, there is some truth to that, as well as some corporate overstating.

So the hard-working Awful Announcing site, with hundreds of thousands of ESPN viewers reading them and following their work on Twitter, makes an honest request to interview an ESPN exec as part of a series on the state of the sports cable networks. CBS Sports makes one available. Fox Sports makes one available. NBC Sports makes one available.

ESPN declines to so.

It's a disappointing strategy, and a foolish longterm one as well, as we sit on the eve of the Fox Sports 1 launch. It also strikes me as trying to big-time a smaller entity, which is ESPN management's right. Mostly, it feels somewhat hypocritical to complain about a lack of clarity and context in stories and then prevent access. If an ESPN reporter was getting shutout by a team or a university on access, I'd be among the loudest fighting for it, as I imagine would Awful Announcing.

ESPN has always been very generous with press access -- especially when they want to trot out shiny new hires and new digital studios. I hope they reconsider here because their own viewers are served by the transparency.



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