ESPN Poynter Review Project

The rise of Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks’ Asian-American star, has been one of 2012’s feel-good sports stories. But it’s come with an unwelcome undercurrent: racial references by fans, columnists and TV personalities that have ranged from innocent-but-cringe-worthy to openly offensive.

Last week, ESPN went from the sidelines of this spectacle to center stage, issuing three apologies within 24 hours for “offensive and inappropriate comments” that led to one employee’s dismissal and another’s suspension for 30 days.

The first incident to garner widespread attention involved a headline on ESPN’s mobile website early Saturday morning. As ESPN dealt with the fallout from that mistake, its attention was drawn to another incident, on ESPNEWS on Wednesday night, then to a third on ESPN Radio on Friday night. All three involved the phrase “chink in the armor,” which has no racial connotations in itself but was an unfortunate choice -- to say the least -- when used in discussing Lin’s on-court performance.

After looking into the incidents, The Poynter Review Project sees one as a lapse in judgment by an editor working without a net and the other two as terribly timed slips of the tongue. One of the punishments imposed strikes us as too severe. And we note that the phrase that got ESPN in so much trouble is awfully shopworn and lazy. Whether they can be misinterpreted or not, clichés are signs of a writer or speaker on cruise control – which increases the chance of a crash.

Let’s look at the headline first. According to ESPN, it appeared on the mobile website around 2:30 a.m. Saturday and was taken down about 35 minutes later. The headline linked to a story by Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com about whether the Knicks’ loss to the New Orleans Hornets had exposed weaknesses in Lin’s game.

Anthony Mormile, vice president for mobile content at ESPN, said the Bristol-based editorial team for the mobile sites consists of eight people who usually work two per shift. After 2 a.m., one editor is often catching up on the “back end,” updating content for sports that aren’t in season and taking care of other editorial loose ends. The other editor is generally handling the “front end” of the site, loading up “experience carousels” with headlines, summaries and links to articles. (Because cellphones offer less screen real estate than desktop computers, the mobile editors often write different headlines.)

Mormile said that, on Saturday night, the front-end editor -- 28-year-old Anthony Federico, who had six years of experience on the mobile team -- liked Begley’s column and decided to spotlight it for the mobile site, sensing that the conversation had shifted from the Knicks’ loss to potential holes in Lin’s game. As Mormile noted, Federico “created more work for himself” in doing so, and, by deciding to feature the Lin story on the mobile home page, “in theory, he did absolutely 100 percent the right thing.”

Unfortunately, his choice of headlines unraveled all that. Said Mormile, “Anthony had no concept, no awareness that could be construed as a potentially explosive headline.”

Rob King, senior vice president for editorial, print and digital, said that, as things now stand, the Web and mobile sides of ESPN’s house are technologically different and generally work in parallel, not together. On the Web side, King said, lead content packages and headlines go through a copy desk before they’re pushed live, and a copy editor is always there when a home page editor is working. But the mobile team doesn’t have “that level of oversight … you had one person making a move that a lot of people could see.”

Mormile says the mobile editors generally double-check each other’s work, providing at least an informal safety net. But the other editor on Federico’s shift was busy supporting ESPN’s Bracket Bound app, which is getting a lot of usage in the run-up to March Madness. Federico pushed the headline out himself -- and, when Mormile was alerted a little after 3 a.m., Twitter “was blowing up with people putting up screen shots and condemnations.”

The next morning, ESPN issued a prepared statement saying that “we are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.” Linking to that statement via Twitter, King wrote that “there’s no defense for the indefensible. All we can offer are our apologies, sincere though incalculably inadequate.”

By then, though, ESPN was dealing with another unfortunate use of the phrase: ESPNEWS anchor Max Bretos had used it Wednesday night while interviewing Knicks analyst Walt Frazier. That brought another apology, one also made on the air Saturday. The third use of the phrase in connection with Lin came to light after that: On Friday night, Knicks play-by-play announcer Spero Dedes had said it on ESPN Radio New York.

On Sunday, Federico was dismissed and Bretos suspended for 30 days. (Dedes is employed by MSG Network, which produces the Knicks' radio broadcasts.) John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president of production, said that the two decisions were reached after “a number of conversations” and that, although “the subject matter was the same, we looked at each incident on its own.”

Mormile said Federico “was devastated, but understood” the company’s decision. On Twitter, Bretos apologized, said his comment was “not done with any racial reference,” acknowledged that the phrase had been inappropriate in that context and pledged to “make every effort to avoid something similar happening again.” Asked about Dedes, an MSG spokesman said Monday that “we are evaluating and will have no additional comment at this time.”

One potential factor in the severity of the punishments: Earlier in the week, racial sensitivity regarding the Lin storyline was a topic in the company’s monthly editorial board meeting, and ESPN issued a memo to all its content groups urging staffers to be cognizant of how Lin was discussed -- a directive that was revisited in a Friday staff meeting.

Anyone who had followed other media outlets’ Lin coverage understood the need for caution: MSG had shown a fan-made graphic of Lin emerging from a fortune cookie; the New York Post celebrated a Lin buzzer-beater with the back-page headline “AMASIAN!”; and Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock had apologized for a sophomoric, racially tinged tweet about Lin. Not long after discussing the need to avoid such missteps, however, ESPN had a flurry of its own to deal with.

Mormile praised Federico as “a good, good kid,” and called the mistake “a momentary lapse of judgment that ended up being an egregious error.” Many journalists have been saved by the sharp eyes of others and some luck; sadly, Federico had neither on his side. But, even at mobile speed, a headline writer has time to deliberate, and learning how to step back and assess one’s work is a critical skill. (We reached out to Federico, who didn't want to comment at this time.)

The 30-day suspension of Bretos -- who has been with ESPN for two years -- strikes us as too harsh, though. Looking at the clip of Bretos’ comments, we see no sign he was trying to be snarky or clever, and an on-air reporter must think, listen and talk in real time, with no chance to review his or her words. Flubs and slips of the tongue are a hazard of the trade, and an unfortunate choice of words at the wrong time can be devastating. Reconsidering Bretos’ sentence would neither undermine ESPN's speedy and forthright response to these incidents nor damage its efforts to make sure such a thing doesn’t happen again.

One step we would suggest is for ESPN to demand that its writers and on-air talent find richer language and fresher turns of phrase. We’d be happy never to read or hear “chink in the armor” again on ESPN. That has nothing to do with political correctness or the possibility of an innocent phrase being misconstrued. Rather, it’s that the descriptive power of that phrase was leached away by overuse decades ago, and it’s now just clichéd noise -- and a sign of someone on cruise control. (Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless discussed the issue of racial sensitivity and ESPN's missteps on “First Take” on Monday morning.)

Technological help also might be on the way. King said that ESPN is “right in the middle of building a better process” that allows editors to publish to all platforms, which would align the mobile team’s efforts better with those of its Web counterparts and give its employees more of a safety net.

Technological fixes aren’t everything, of course: In its prepared statement, ESPN promised other measures, including self-examination and response to constructive criticism.

“It’s a teaching moment and a learning moment for the entire organization,” Wildhack said. “And that’s what we’re going to use it as.”

There's a lot of sports talk on ESPN during weekday afternoons, and last week the Poynter Review Project consumed a steady diet of it. I began at noon, with the last hour of "The Herd," a simulcast of Colin Cowherd's radio show, and after that switched between ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNEWS until 6 p.m., when either "Pardon the Interruption" or "SportsNation" ended.

Granted, that's a somewhat artificial diet. I suspect most ESPN viewers (or at least the gainfully employed ones) watch a show or two, rather than sit down for six hours at a stretch. But a weeklong immersion was a good way to gather impressions about what works, what doesn't, and how ESPN's choice of formats shapes the conversations that make these shows soar or struggle.

ESPN has an enviable amount of talent at its disposal, from veteran interviewers to interesting guests. Nearly everyone on the air had an impressive knowledge of sports, good points to make, and proved entertaining company.

But too often it felt like conversations were cut short or dumbed down. I don't blame the panelists, but the shows themselves. Over and over, I saw interesting discussions abandoned because a show was charging hard to the next segment, or intriguing conversations that failed to develop because panelists and viewers alike were focused on countdown clocks or scorekeeping. Such devices discourage real conversation in favor of sports bromides and manufactured disagreements.

The week's best conversations came when the pace was less frantic. "Outside the Lines" was consistently smart and informative, whether the topic was Joe Paterno, how things go awry for place-kickers, or stem-cell therapy for athletes. It helps that host Bob Ley is a superb interviewer, with a sure-handed way of nudging conversations in the desired direction and a sense of when an apparent tangent is actually a more interesting topic. Take Tuesday's show, when Ley patiently steered former NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart away from clichés about taking it to the next level, then followed writer Stefan Fatsis's lead into a good conversation about kickers' preparations.

We live in a hurry-up age in which not every show can move at the stately pace of OTL. But there were other times when ESPN personalities pushed more deeply into a subject in search of new insights and arguments.

On Tuesday's show, Cowherd argued that college coaches are often socially awkward and live in a bubble, which might help explain Paterno's reported bafflement about the sexual nature of alleged contacts between former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and boys. Cowherd flashed back to his days covering UNLV basketball under then-coach Jerry Tarkanian, whom Cowherd said was so immersed in coaching that he wasn't aware of the Iran hostage crisis -- even as it led the news every night. That was an angle on Paterno I hadn't heard before. The next day, Cowherd used the tiff between Peyton Manning and the Colts as a jumping-off point to discuss how difficult quarterback successions are for even the best-run NFL teams -- a topic that wouldn't have worked crammed into a quick bite. (The apparently tireless Cowherd also shows up on "SportsNation," but that show can barely catch its breath, and the audience chatter is a distraction.)

The Manning soap opera also led to a good conversation on the "Scott Van Pelt Show." On Friday, Van Pelt and co-host Ryen Russillo delved into Manning, Colts owner Jim Irsay and the best role for a team owner in today's age of constant communication. The conversation was engaging for a number of reasons: Van Pelt is thoughtful and curious, his rapport with Russillo feels easy and natural, and both are more interested in generating light than heat. But mostly, the segment worked because the two had time for an actual conversation.

Elsewhere, those conversations were harder to find. "Numbers Never Lie" is breezy and cheerful, but it's also a bait-and-switch, claiming to be "a nerdy show" but really just uses numbers as decorative elements for the kind of Just So Stories about teams' momentum and desire that you hear elsewhere. Wednesday's show was particularly aggravating: Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders used a relatively simple stat called "points prevented per drive" to demonstrate that the Patriots' defense bends but doesn't break. But fellow panelists Michael Smith and Hugh Douglas (another former pro) repeatedly cut him off with complaints such as "here we go with the decimals" and "you are making this game way too hard." It was pretend stupidity meant for comic effect, but by stifling any real conversation, it gave an uncomfortably convincing impression of the real thing.

Then there's "Around the Horn." Tony Reali is a slyly charming emcee, everybody seems to be having a good time, and the half-hour passes quickly enough. But "Around the Horn" is so full of countdown clocks, lightning rounds and tallying up points that the panelists -- many of them newspaper veterans known for lyrical writing -- struggle to have a real conversation. By boiling the talk down to scoring points, even in jest, "Around the Horn" encourages quick hits and contrived arguments, with nuance rare and insight hard to discover.

Take Monday's show. The gang was discussing Paterno, and panelist Woody Paige noted how former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes' secretary recalled the great coach's sadness after he was forced into retirement. It was a nice moment, but Reali cut him off because it was Tim Cowlishaw's turn. Later, Smith offered an evocative line about Paterno's legacy: "There's a 'but' with everybody. ... We're all going to leave with regrets." That could have been the start of a great conversation, but it was off to someone else. The format killed any chance for real discussion and deeper insight.

Sometimes shows rise above these limitations. "Pardon the Interruption" is also thick with segments, but it has fewer moving parts, and co-hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are so well-matched that you feel like you've dropped in on a years-long conversation. (Which you have.) Still, I found myself wishing I could watch them without timers and incessant reminders of upcoming topics. On Wednesday, the two dug into the Bruins' Tim Thomas refusing to visit the White House with his teammates. They brought up previous athletes who'd skipped the trip, wondered if Manny Ramirez knew there was a president, and pondered the difference between the president and the office of the president. Good stuff, and I would have listened to more, but the clock was running -- and so with that surface barely scratched, off we raced to something else.

The most pleasant surprise in the afternoon lineup is a recent addition -- "Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable," which features Le Batard (of the Miami Herald) and his father, Gonzalo, identified only as Papi. The two debate the sports stories of the day, with Papi playing the charming clown and the younger Le Batard in the unlikely role of straight man. "Highly Questionable" has the same on-camera ADD as the shows around it, but the goofy interplay between father and son fits the format. Even better are Le Batard's interviews: He's a fearless, slightly unhinged questioner, merrily needling guests and relentlessly pushing them into subject areas where you're not sure they or Le Batard really feel safe going.

The two Le Batards would be a poor fit for a show such as "Outside the Lines," but The Poynter Review Project thinks they are exceptions that prove the rule. In too many other cases, I found myself wishing the panelists had more time to address fewer subjects. That would let them make better use of the knowledge and passion that got them on ESPN in the first place.

With the Super Bowl upcoming and the NFL playoffs in the rearview mirror, we have the time and distance necessary to examine the phenomenon of Tebowmania and, specifically, to scrutinize ESPN's role in spreading the craze during the 2011 season.

Tebowmania was the national obsession with the Denver Broncos' quarterback. But it could also be described as an affliction besetting the media.

As watchers of all media, not just ESPN, we at the Poynter Review Project can verify that Tebowmania was in full force across all media, not just ESPN. New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni wrote about Tebow. National Public Radio did numerous stories, including an "All Things Considered" piece examining the mystery of Tebow's success and a "Morning Edition" story dissecting the grip Tebow has over Denver. Sports Illustrated featured Tebow on its cover, as did the NFL, which opted to debut its new magazine this fall by leading off with the former Heisman Trophy winner.

But ESPN took the cake, along with a lot of criticism, when it came to Tebowmania. And it goes back a long way. From the moment Tebow was drafted in the first round in 2010, folks at the network took notice.

"That was unexpected," said Craig Bengtson, senior coordinating producer for "SportsCenter." "From that day on, everyone who follows the NFL was waiting to see what happens with Tim Tebow."

Tebow coverage took off for ESPN in 2011. Among the highlights:

• Long before the NFL season opened, ESPN opened its Year of the Quarterback with an hourlong documentary on Tebow, which aired several times throughout the year.
• Commentator Skip Bayless spent an inordinate amount of time on "First Take" offering up praise for Tebow.
• Bayless' advocacy became the primary material for DJ Steve Porter's catchy Auto-Tune mashup, "All he does is win" used on "First Take."
• Tebow was the cover of the Oct. 31 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
• "SportsCenter" dedicated not one, but two special shows to Tebow.

It's hard to judge any of this as excessive. Tebow garnered a lot of buzz coming into the pros after a career in which his Florida Gators won two BCS championships and he won the Heisman, and was responsible for a special NCAA rule that forbids messages in eye paint after he used his to cite Bible verses. His Broncos No. 15 jersey tops NFL sales. He holds the record for most tweets per second on Twitter. He is a genuine social phenomenon, even without ESPN.

Thus came the messiah metaphors. ESPN The Magazine writer Tim Keown wrote his October story as a loose retelling of Jesus among the crowds. He described Tebow as a vessel of hope. It fit in nicely with the Plan B theme of that issue. (It was supposed to be the NBA preview issue, changed by the lockout.)

The Plan B issue featured Tebow on the cover (the best art available, according to Chad Millman, ESPN The Magazine's editor-in-chief.) The Sunday after that issue, Denver went to Miami, where Tebow brought the Broncos back from a 15-0 deficit in the final minutes of the fourth quarter, forcing overtime and eventually winning the game.

And suddenly Tebow really was a god. And he kept on winning, at least for a while, ultimately leading the Broncos to the playoffs, and prompting lots and lots of chatter along the way.

ESPN's success comes not from its coverage of games but from its ability to extend those games into a story and tell that story from different angles. Stories need main characters. Tebow is undoubtedly a main character, an epic hero to some, an unexposed great pretender to others.

Everyone we talked to at the network was unapologetic about the coverage. Whenever Tebow plays, fans watch. When sports anchors and radio hosts are talking about Tebow, the ratings go up. Every time Tebow does something unexpected or new, there will be a story. And you can expect someone, somewhere at ESPN to cover it.

So who objects to all this? As far as we can tell, the resentment comes from two places. When ESPN binges on a single story, viewers who value variety are offended. Then there are fans who care mainly about the play on the field. They follow the sport, not the story.

Les Young from Chesapeake, Va., wrote, "The ESPN sick love affair with Tim Tebow is way over the top. I've never seen so much attention heaped on a below average quarterback. It's on every show, and on the website every day. ESPN is the worldwide leader at something, alienating people who do not share their man crush."

The general underlying principle shared by the critics is that coverage of an athlete should relate to that athlete's talent and success. Some fans even accuse the network of fanning the flames of Tebowmania to ensure the story lives on. On that point, there is certainly a disconnect. Coverage of individual athletes is not a meritocracy at ESPN; it is based on what the crowd wants.

There are athletes who "move the needle," said Michael Shiffman, a senior coordinating producer for "SportsCenter." Critics might talk about fatigue over Tebow or any other athlete who draws disproportionate attention (Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Brett Favre et al), but folks at ESPN look at hard data.

"If you think interest is going down, the ratings show you otherwise," Shiffman said.

And then sometimes a story jumps off the sports pages.

"We are aware when things transcend sports. Hopefully we are out ahead of it and we've seen it coming," Shiffman said. "We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't see it coming."

That is the moment of disconnect. When a story gets bigger than the sport itself, and ESPN leans into that narrative rather than turning away, some fans throw up their hands and cry, "excess." But an all-sports network is the very definition of excess. We're not inclined to fault folks for doing the very thing that's made them successful.

What was Holly Rowe's reaction when a friend texted her that she was trending on Twitter?

"That can't be good."

On Jan. 3, the ESPN sideline reporter had interviewed Michigan football coach Brady Hoke after the Wolverines beat Virginia Tech in overtime to win the Sugar Bowl, 23-20. Some viewers noticed a curious encounter in the postgame, on-field scrum. Right after Hoke's handshake with Hokies coach Frank Beamer, the Michigan coach turned to face a woman with a tape recorder. But as he did so, Rowe arrived, shouldered the woman out of the way, then grabbed Hoke for an on-camera interview.

That maneuver sent blogosphere tongues wagging. Some admired Rowe's mettle, joking about stiff-arms, forearm shivers, sharp elbows, pushes or shoves. But others weren't laughing. Wrote one reader to the Poynter Review Project: "I felt it was very unprofessional. … What message does this send to our youth?" Another user called it "Absolutely revolting. She needs to make a public apology." And some saw the close encounter as ESPN crossing the line between dominance and bullying.

Was what happened on the field in New Orleans an aberration, or business as usual? Securing an on-field interview is often a half-contact sport, but there are commonly understood protocols for how it's done. Rowe didn't violate those and, from what we can tell, the woman she boxed out took no offense. Between some miscommunication and the scramble after an overtime win, viewers got an unexpected and somewhat startling look at postgame chaos that's fairly routine.

"There is no typical postgame," Rowe told us. "You can never predict what's happening. It's never as organized as you want -- it's always chaotic."

When the game ends, a lot happens at once. The players greet each other. The coaches, often accompanied by police and sometimes by event staff, wind through crowds and well-wishers to shake hands. Photographers, camera operators and reporters swarm the field to find the coaches and the game's stars. A huge number of folks -- from assistant coaches and PR people to equipment managers and TV crews -- are trying to do their jobs in a big space that suddenly seems small.

As a sideline reporter, Rowe said, "The zeroes go on the clock and you run -- I literally run."

Sometimes sideline reporters access players or coaches are helped by event officials, but most of the time they're on their own.

"It's frantic, you're running and hoping for the best," Rowe said. Sometime she has been "forearmed, pushed and knocked down" by security people who don't realize what she's doing. And all the while, producers are yelling in a reporter's ear, trying to establish when to cut away from the broadcast team and down to the field. (For another in-the-scrum perspective, here’s one from one-time ESPN sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein.)

Amidst the chaos, it's commonly understood protocol among the reporters that the first on-field coach interview (typically quite short) belongs to the holder of the TV rights for that game. Ed Placey, ESPN's coordinating producer of college football, says that right isn't contractually specified but that's because the media generally agree that a common understanding is preferable to rules that would keep reporters at bay or off the field.

"That's the last thing anybody would want," Placey said.

But several things were different at the Sugar Bowl, leading to a bit of a mess.

The game went to overtime, so ESPN didn't know in the final seconds who the winning coach would be, and couldn't position itself to intercept him. As the happy Wolverines dog-piled on the field, Hoke got a celebratory Gatorade bath, and Rowe said she got slammed in the back in the confusion and nearly fell.

"Our reporters are usually right there in [the coach's] hip pocket," Placey said. But given the sudden ending and the chaos, Rowe was late getting into position -- and somebody else was already there.

The other person wasn't a reporter but a staff member working for John Sudsbury, the Sugar Bowl's media relations director. Mindful that it was after midnight and reporters in the press box were on deadline, Sudsbury had sent the staff member down to get "quick quotes" from Hoke that reporters could use. It was, he said, "bad communication, probably on my part."

Rowe said that just as she was going to get to Hoke, Sudsbury's staffer arrived and started asking questions. "I said 'no no no' and slid in between her and the coach, put my arm around him," Rowe recalled.

Rowe didn't think it had been a big deal, but ESPN's high camera angle had caught the collision. (See it and some of what led up to it here, and a closer view here.) That also wasn't normal, Placey said; ESPN tries to avoid showing the reporter and crew setting up the live shot with the coach. This time it did, and the results were a Web hit.

With the video seemingly everywhere the next day, Rowe said she called Sudsbury's staffer, whom she knew from previous games. Rowe said the staffer reassured her that she wasn't offended, and they laughed about it; Sudsbury said the staffer "had no problem whatsoever."

(Through others, we reached out to the staffer for comment, but were told she'd prefer not to be an even bigger part of the story.)

We're satisfied that no harm was done on the field beyond giving viewers more of a look at how the postgame sausage gets made than ESPN -- or any other network -- would prefer.

"It didn't seem like an unusual scene to me," Placey said. "It just didn't look flattering on TV."

Said Rowe: "I feel bad that people think it was something mean," adding that "It happens all the time. It will happen again. You do have to be aggressive to get your interview."

On consecutive shows in October, ESPN's newsmagazine "E:60" included interviews with subjects whose speech wasn't always easy to understand. But the network made different choices in how it presented those interviews: the words of Jamie Convey, a 10-year-old white child with cerebral palsy from Philadelphia, weren't subtitled; those of Ernest Willis, an impoverished black man from Tennessee, were.

Intentional or not, that's the kind of contrast that can leave viewers asking questions and send bloggers to their keyboards. But conversations with members of the "E:60" production staff provide a window into the sometimes-agonizing decisions ESPN makes about when and how to use subtitles.

Subtitling, says "E:60" executive producer Andy Tennant, is "one of the most difficult and intense and thorough decisions we make."

Particularly when subjects are speaking English, subtitling defies blanket policies or sweeping generalizations, and there's rarely an answer that's clearly right or wrong. Every case is different, and every one generates debate. (For more on subtitling in the Willis and Convey cases, read Steve Marantz's blog entries here and here. They're from ESPN's in-house Production Notes blog, which is well worth a bookmark.)

We'll start with Willis.

"The Good Life" is the story of San Francisco 49ers all-pro linebacker Patrick Willis. It's gripping stuff: Willis and his three siblings grew up in poverty outside the little town of Bruceton, Tenn. Their mother left when they were quite young, and they say their father, Ernest Willis, beat and threatened them before state officials arranged fot their placement in foster care.

On the final day of shooting, producer Beein Gim learned that Ernest Willis wanted to answer his children's allegations in an interview. Gim noted that Willis spoke very quickly and occasionally rambled or mumbled, and there were points in the interview in which she didn't entirely follow his responses. When the interview was finished, a cameramen raised the possibility that Willis might have to be subtitled.

Coordinating producer Michael Baltierra saw an early version of "The Good Life" that lacked subtitles, and recalls having trouble understanding Willis despite having read the script. By the time ESPN staff members screened the "The Good Life," the subtitles had been added.

Above all, those involved with "The Good Life" say clarity was the major reason for subtitling Willis - clarity in the service of fairness. If the audience didn't understand what Willis was saying, his arguments on his own behalf would be undermined.

"Serious accusations were being made against this man," Baltierra says. "Even before we had the subtitling discussion, we talked a lot about making sure that any time someone accuses him of something in the piece, we have to give him a chance to respond."

So the question became whether viewers could understand Willis. ESPN staffers watched "The Good Life" twice, and those we interviewed agree that the audience of about 25 or so was split evenly between those who could follow what he was saying and those who couldn't. (They also note that staff members of various races were in the room, as were producers from Willis's native Tennessee.)

In pondering whether to subtitle, feature producer Lisa Binns tried to separate what she'd heard from what she'd read. During the first screening, she says, "I wasn't really listening as much, which I think is our tendency - if words are on the screen, we're drawn to them."

For the second screening, Binns says, she closed her eyes and listened - and understood what Willis was saying. That led her to argue that subtitling wasn't necessary - though she acknowledges that "of course I had the benefit of seeing it twice, which the viewer doesn't. . . . I couldn't say whether I understood him because I'd already seen it."

While the primary discussion was about clarity, the assembled staffers did discuss other concerns - what were the implications of subtitling "a black man from the South who's not wealthy," as Binns puts it. The decision not to subtitle Jamie Convey was also raised as part of that discussion.

Like Binns, Baltierra wondered if the subtitles had influenced the viewers in judging their own ability to understand Willis. So he and others in management watched segments of the raw interview without subtitles. Baltierra concluded that the audience would need help.

"I thought for a first-time viewer it would be almost impossible to get every nuance of his argument," he says.

That, Baltierra says, made the rest of the conversation "much clearer and easier" - sensitivity to race and socio-economics were worthy of discussion, but clarity trumped those concerns.

"Before everything else,'' he says, "the viewer has to understand what's going on in the story."

Clarity was also the primary concern in the decision of whether to subtitle Convey for "Radio Dreams", a moving story of a kid with a challenging disease chasing a dream. During the screening of that feature, Tennant says that "about 80 percent of the room" felt comfortable not subtitling him.

Again, clarity was the most important question, although a different story called for different criteria. The Convey interview was part of a portrait of the subject, while the Willis interview dealt point-by-point with specific allegations. If the audience didn't understand what Willis was saying in his own defense, that very defense would be rendered ineffective. But if Convey on occasion wasn't completely clear or not understood, the portrait would still work.
"There were one or two places where you might not follow what he's saying, but I get it," says Baltierra. "I'm not losing the thread of the story."

In the wake of the Willis piece, Binns suggested one change in ESPN's procedures.

"If there's ever a question," she said, "we should screen it without the subtitles first and see how people react to get a real read on whether this person can be understood or not. And then have a discussion."

It's advice Tennant says he plans to take. Given that the same issue came up with back-to-back shows, it's natural the two instances were linked. But those involved say that was simply a case of timing.

Binns thinks it's impossible to have a blanket policy for subtitling. She thinks the question will always be decided on a case-by-case basis, with the biggest concern whether the audience can understand what's being said the first time.

"You just have to make sure that the point people are trying to make gets through," Gim says. "It's about making sure voices that need to be heard get heard."

That sounds right to us.

There's a lot of outrage right now over ESPN's failure to report in 2003 that there were sexual abuse allegations against Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine.

We're hearing it from fans through the Poynter Review Project mailbag. And a handful of critics have called out the network via blogs and Twitter, suggesting that if ESPN was not confident enough to publish, it should have at least gone to law enforcement with its information.

Eight years ago, ESPN journalists spent significant time and energy over roughly a six-month period interviewing one alleged victim, Bobby Davis; listening to the now-infamous recording between Davis and Bernie Fine's wife, Laurie; and trying to get other possible victims to talk.

Based on what Vince Doria, ESPN's senior vice president and director of news, told us this week, it's clear that the network didn't have enough information to publish a story at that time. Going public would have been journalistically irresponsible.

In the wake of the recent indictment of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State, Mike Lang came forward as the second alleged victim to accuse Fine. But in 2003, according to Doria, Lang was denying that he had been molested. Along with Lang, who is Davis' stepbrother, another man ESPN interviewed in 2003 denied he was a victim, and another potential victim refused to talk. The Fines both refused to talk as well.

Fine was fired Sunday after the 10-year-old voice recording of his wife, Laurie, emerged in which she discusses her husband's alleged abuse of Davis, and after the accusations of another alleged victim, Zachary Tomaselli, came to light.

Many critics have suggested that the tape of Laurie Fine should have been enough for ESPN to go public. It's not. Nowhere on the tape does she describe firsthand knowledge of her husband abusing children. She says that she thinks there were other victims, and disturbingly acknowledges that she believes Davis was abused by her husband. But she doesn't describe why she believes that to be true or say she witnessed abuse herself. (ESPN also couldn't prove until recently the woman on the tape was actually Laurie Fine.)

Newsrooms often deal with damning allegations, with no way to gather enough evidence to prove they are true. That's what happened to The Idaho Statesman when it was investigating rumors that Sen. Larry Craig was gay. It's also what happened to the St. Petersburg Times (which is owned by The Poynter Institute) and the Miami Herald when they investigated Rep. Mark Foley's questionable relationships with congressional pages.

When it comes to behavior behind closed doors, journalists often hit a dead end. When this happens, a journalism investigation becomes like a detective's cold case. You can keep knocking on doors, even though the chances of turning up new information seem remote and you do so at the expense of other investigations. You can also put the investigation on a back burner, stoking it only when new information arises. Or, you can drop it, which is what ESPN did in 2003.

We think the network gave up prematurely.

The network should have pursued two more lines of inquiry. First, someone should have called the chief of police in Syracuse (who, it turns out, was a former Syracuse basketball player, although no one at ESPN knew that at the time. But if they'd called, maybe they would have.) Reporters should have asked the police department why it wasn't pursuing an investigation. Given all that we know about people who sexually abuse children, if there was evidence to substantiate one case, it seems reasonable that police should look for more recent victims.

"We weren't looking to do any kind of examination of the Syracuse Police Department," Doria said. "We maybe could have checked further. At the time, Dennis Duvall was the chief, maybe if we had been aware of that, it would have piqued our interest."

Second, ESPN journalists should have called someone in the Syracuse president's office to ask whether there were other complaints and to review policies that govern the interaction of employees and children.

These two basic lines of inquiry could have shaken something loose. We do not believe ESPN acted with gross negligence, but rather a lack of persistence. And we don't believe ESPN was responsible for leaving other children vulnerable; that's on the Syracuse PD.

ESPN's lack of persistence is all the more glaring because by 2003, we as a society were coming to grips with the full implications of the systemic failure of the Catholic Church to protect children. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Northeast region, where Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law had lost his post in the wake of evidence (uncovered by Doria's former employer, The Boston Globe) that Law protected priests rather than hold them accountable.

There are a lot of parallels between the culture of sports and the culture of the Catholic Church. They are dominated by men. Successful leaders are lionized and worshipped by their followers. And there's a lot of money and power at stake.

When you pull back from the narrow view of the sports world and look at the broader picture, it's obvious that certain institutions are vulnerable to turning a blind eye to child sexual abuse. Part of the watchdog role of journalists is to hold those powerful institutions accountable.

ESPN and other journalists could have, and should have, tried harder to do that back in 2003. It's possible the network still would have fallen short of the threshold to go public. But if ESPN had exhausted all the reporting possibilities at the time, today it could say in good conscience its news-gatherers did all they could do.

Instead, the best the network can say is that it did almost everything possible. It doesn't sound quite as good.

Earlier this month, ESPN debuted “Unguarded,” the story of Massachusetts basketball prodigy Chris Herren, whose battles with substance abuse dogged his college hoops and NBA careers.

The documentary, directed by Jonathan Hock, is an unflinching, often-riveting look at Herren’s struggles and his efforts to overcome them and reclaim his life. The film's Nov. 1 premiere was well-received, except for one false note: Given Herren’s demons, why was the documentary sponsored in part by whiskey maker Jameson?

The contrast between Herren’s scary stories of drug and alcohol abuse and that particular sponsorship made for a jarring juxtaposition -- and Twitterers, bloggers and readers who wrote to us wanted to know how ESPN could have been so insensitive.

The answer: It was a mistake, one ESPN moved quickly to correct.

According to ESPN, the network noticed tweets about the Jameson sponsorship the night of the film’s premiere, discussed the issue the next morning, and then pulled the whiskey maker’s “billboard” (the on-screen corporate logo and sponsorship message) from all subsequent airings. Only the premiere carried the Jameson sponsorship.

Executives at Jameson were part of those morning-after discussions, and they agreed with dropping the billboard. The whiskey maker is a sponsor of the overall ESPN Films series, not just “Unguarded.”

“We were unaware of the content in this particular film (which made it inappropriate for our brand), and would not have sponsored the film if we had been aware,” Jameson told us in a prepared statement.

So how did this happen in the first place? Blame autopilot on the part of ESPN’s standards-and-practices group, which is responsible for making sure commercials and advertising messages are appropriate for the programming, time of day and other considerations.

In this case, the non-standard format of the ESPN Films series was apparently a contributing factor. The films are shown with limited commercial interruptions, with sponsors such as Jameson and Buick providing financial support without the same level of branding seen with regular 30-second commercials. In the right setting, such sponsorships are considered a good thing for viewers and advertisers alike.

But ESPN’s standards-and-practices group mostly worries about traditional commercials. For “Unguarded,” the group had few traditional ad spots to catch, and Jameson was a familiar name as a series sponsor. Combine those two things, and, well, the group let its guard down.

“We erred on the side of trying to be innovative in terms of the advertising environment and in trying to provide our fans a limited-interruption environment,” said Ed Erhardt, ESPN's president of consumer sales and marketing. “Unfortunately the film for this one brand wasn’t the right connection. We responded as quickly as we could.”

Erhardt doesn’t see a need to change ESPN’s procedures, beyond a reminder that the standards-and-practices team needs to be eagle-eyed, even outside of its routines. That sounds right to us.

“These things occur,” Erhardt says. “It’s one of those things where you say, ‘Let’s be sure we’re looking at everything.’ And ‘everything’ includes the limited-commercial-interruption billboards.”

ESPN was slow this week to grasp the full implications of the recent criminal indictments at Penn State University.

On Saturday, news broke that a grand jury had charged former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky with 40 criminal counts of molesting eight young boys between 1994 and 2009, as well as charging the athletic director Tim Curley and PSU vice president Gary Schultz with perjury.

The indictment paints a picture of a moral failure of epic proportions at PSU, the kind of systemic blindness caused by misplaced loyalties, abject power and unwavering devotion to the wrong values.

We were watching the coverage closely, particularly on Monday and Tuesday.

With the biggest staff of sports journalists in the world, ESPN should have been leading the charge to ask tough questions and shed light on this scandal. Instead, it was the tiny Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. out in front of the journalism pack. Their reporters managed to track down two mothers of boys Sandusky allegedly abused. And the paper had the leadership to write a front-page editorial calling for Penn State trustees to clean house.

Meanwhile, the tone of the early ESPN coverage was spotty -- sometimes getting it right, but more often seeming inappropriate. It wasn't until mid-afternoon Tuesday that ESPN finally seemed consistently to ask the right questions and find the appropriate moral outrage. That's 72 hours after the story first broke.

Vince Doria, ESPN's senior vice president and director of news, defended the network's coverage, pointing out that from the outset managers were sensitive to the victims in the story.

"We urged everyone from outset to be sensitive to victims," Doria wrote in an email. "Some presentations were no doubt better than others in this regard. On Monday, when 'SportsCenter' returned to all-day live coverage, we were in place to provide comprehensive coverage of what we perceived as a big story."

Doria didn't articulate a specific strategy that would have ESPN steering the story, rather than simply reacting to it. We were hoping to see more of the former early on in the news cycle. And now that Paterno has been fired, the network is clearly hitting its stride. But earlier in the week, that was not the case.

We were particularly dismayed Tuesday morning, when ESPN and its vast resources seemed to be behind the curve, failing to turn up new information or advance the story and instead sounding tone deaf to the nature of this story.

A College Football Nation blog post Monday by Adam Rittenberg examined how the Penn State scandal could affect the Nittany Lions' recruiting. Rittenberg's post linked to one of ESPN's early news stories about the case, but made scant mention of the particulars of the case beyond that.

To be sure, college football recruiting is a topic of vast interest to a fair-sized audience, and there's certainly a story there at some point. But coming when it did, Rittenberg's post wound up looking myopic and trivial. Readers pounced in the comments. "10-year-olds anally raped? Quick, what are the recruiting implications?" asked one commenter, while another advised, "Leave your Bristol bubble and rejoin the human race."

We often marvel at the anonymous vitriol of web comments sections, but in this case the mob was right to take up its virtual torches and pitchforks.

By Tuesday, we expected ESPN to find its footing, but that didn't happen. When Penn State canceled a scheduled news conference that morning, that left "SportsCenter" with a reporter outside the stadium with nothing to report. Then in the 11 a.m. hour "SportsCenter" brought in Matt Millen, who played for Paterno and now works as an ESPN analyst, for an interview with anchor Chris McKendry.

Neither seemed prepared. McKendry's questions were indirect and non-specific. And Millen himself was understandably still working through the implications of charges. He started by defending Paterno's job and cautioning folks to withhold judgment of the legendary coach. Pressed by McKendry, Millen meandered, eventually choking up and acknowledging that if the charges are true, this is a massive moral failure.

We don't fault Millen -- particularly not for a very human show of emotion. Rather, he was the wrong person to have on the set at the time. It wasn't until "College GameDay" analyst Kirk Herbstreit joined "SportsCenter" in the afternoon that anyone on the air could fully articulate the appropriate hard-hitting questions and moral outrage.

That afternoon's "Around the Horn" treated the scandal like a second-day story, with the panelists (Tim Cowlishaw, Bill Plaschke, Kevin Blackistone and Bob Ryan) speculating on Paterno's job security and grading Penn State's crisis management, making only indirect mention of the alleged sexual abuse.

Only in the show's final moments did someone -- host Tony Reali -- make a direct reference to the victims. That was a contrast to Monday's "Around the Horn," during which an emotional Woody Paige had demanded to know: "What's going on with our national institutions -- our churches, our schools, where you have people [in positions] of trust? We've got to stop it right now. And the way you stop it is the people involved here at Penn State must go away."

We expected Reali to push Monday's panelists for more thoughts on why people trusted as leaders apparently abdicated their responsibilities, or ask whether the power of college football had been a corrupting influence, or other topics. But he stuck to the format, and we were on, with whiplash speed, to Patriots-Giants.

Some good work did stand out on Monday and Tuesday across ESPN's platforms. "Outside the Lines" got it right on Tuesday afternoon, particularly with the participation of ESPN.com writer Howard Bryant, who had written a scathing column. Herbstreit reiterated his analysis, saying that football is a distant second to the criminal charges and leadership failures at the university. Grantland.com writer Michael Weinreb did a good job articulating the mythical nature of football in State College, Pa.

In addition, the website's new stories were current, and senior writer Jeff MacGregor called out Paterno. But doing a lot of work and doing the right type of work are not the same things.

It's not surprising that those who know and love Penn State feel confused or betrayed or even dubious. The revelation of this scandal is the sudden, self-inflicted mortal wounding of a great tradition. It's appropriate to express that betrayal in the coverage. But it can't be all that or even mostly that, especially early in the news cycle.

Where's the reporting designed to hold the powerful accountable? Where are the sources and the witnesses close to the case? ESPN's lineup of former Penn State insiders aren't capable, especially in the dawning of a brutal reality, of doing that work. That's where ESPN has to call upon its heavy hitters.

Moving on to fallout and other issues is standard journalistic fare, but the Penn State scandal isn't any other second-day story, and can't be treated like one. It is so searing because it is about the sexual abuse of children, compounded by the apparent failure of leaders to take moral responsibility for protecting them and a gnawing suspicion that the power of institutions eroded that sense of responsibility. We would expect the instincts of a 24-hour broadcast newsroom to be quicker.

ESPN has built an incredibly powerful organization that is capable of having an impact. The network should live up to that, as it did in flashes Monday and Tuesday. And as this column came together Wednesday, we were pleased to see signs that ESPN was finding its footing. Jemele Hill wrote a take-no-prisoners column. Meanwhile, Rick Reilly focused on the effects of sexual abuse on children, speaking with former NHL player Sheldon Kennedy, a victim of similar abuse himself, about what Sandusky's alleged victims have had to struggle with.

Both columns put the emphasis back where it belonged, as did TV appearances by Trevor Matich and Todd Blackledge.

The good news, such as it exists with this terrible story, is that ESPN will have a chance to make an impact. We are all going to learn much more about what happened, and we are all going to have to grapple with understanding the failure to respond. In article comments and viewer emails, ESPN's audience is beseeching it to lead on both fronts. Whatever its stumbles and missteps at the start, now that it has its journalistic bearings, ESPN can still do that.

Earlier this week, Fox Sports' Jay Glazer reported that the Cincinnati Bengals had traded Carson Palmer to the Oakland Raiders, ending the quarterback's season-long retirement. Amid analysis of the trade came questions about whether ESPN's NFL reporter Adam Schefter had known about the deal Monday night, but opted not to report it to avoid scuttling the trade.

The questions started, as things often do these days, with a tweet -- one seemingly out of left field. It came from John Shahidi, the CEO of iPhone app maker RockLive. This was Shahidi's Tuesday morning tweet: "Thank you @AdamSchefter for the hard work last night. Deal happened last night but he stayed silent to protect CP and the deal..."

Shahidi would soon delete that tweet, offering instead an amended one. Too late -- legendary wide receiver and ESPN analyst Jerry Rice already had retweeted the initial one, leaving tongues wagging across the sports-media world. Had Schefter sacrificed a scoop by holding off on his story at the request of people close to Palmer? Or had he been restricted by an ESPN policy directing reporters to break news on ESPN platforms before distributing it on Twitter?

Schefter and ESPN say they weren't protecting anybody, and didn't run the story initially because they hadn't confirmed it. Schefter called that near miss "one of the most frustrating and disappointing stories I've ever encountered."

Vince Doria, ESPN's senior vice president and director of news, said that both Schefter and his fellow NFL reporter Chris Mortensen were working on the story on Monday night, but neither could confirm the trade. The reporters knew Cincinnati was talking to Oakland, and was at least considering a deal. But they also heard from "at least two pretty good sources" that the deal might not happen, Doria said.

Schefter said that at around 6 p.m. Monday, he got "an FYI" to be on the lookout for a potential Palmer trade -- a possibility that a Yahoo report had raised earlier in the day. He reached out to sources with the Bengals and Raiders, but his Bengals contact said "I doubt it" while his Raiders source described the trade as "falling apart."

Schefter brought in Mortensen, and the two kept "sniffing around" on the story that night and into Tuesday morning, over what Schefter called "an incredibly stressful 15 hours." At 9:41 a.m. Tuesday, Schefter said, he got a text message from a source with one of the teams outlining the trade and asking to be protected -- but no further word on the status of the trade. Schefter said he sent a text in reply seeking clarification, but got no reply.

If he had gotten a clarifying reply, Schefter said ruefully, he would have broken the story and "we're not having this conversation. ... Mort and I had a story written. We sensed it was coming."

Schefter called the suggestion that he'd protected Palmer "absurd and insulting."

"Why would I sit on a story that big?" he asked.

Schefter also made it clear to Poynter that he has trust issues with Palmer, the result of a previous journalistic run-in (we'll avoid the details here, other than to say it makes Schefter an unlikely candidate to do Palmer any favors).

Shahidi's role seems odd at first, but makes more sense once you know that Carson Palmer's brother Jordan is a partner in RockLive. Asked about his tweet, Shahidi told us that "I worded it wrong, nothing else. I'm sure if Adam knew about it, he would have reported it." (Asked how he felt when he saw Rice's retweet, Shahidi said he thought it "was cool that he followed me. I had no clue.")

For his part, Schefter said he's talked to Shahidi in the past, but didn't contact him for the Palmer story. Given his Palmer connections, Schefter said, "John probably thought I had the story," and added that it's possible that Shahidi "knew more than I did."

Cooperating with sources in hopes of landing a scoop is age-old journalistic practice, though it always raises eyebrows. Reporters and editors sometimes find themselves in dicey territory, with loyalty to sources and their own ambitions competing with their bedrock responsibility to readers. But in this case, the scoop was the real reward, and it's hard to imagine for what Schefter might have been holding out.

It's also true that sources and those close to them sometimes assume they know more than they do, a situation that more than one canny reporter has turned to his or her advantage. In the digital age, though, sources and bystanders can be publishers in their own right, turning private assumptions and conjecture into public water-cooler talk -- particularly when a famous athlete fans the flames. (ESPN's policy on distributing news via Twitter is an interesting topic that deserves its own post; expect more on that from us in the future.)

In retrospect, Doria said, ESPN should have advanced the story by reporting that the two teams were talking, instead of trying to lock down a confirmation of the trade. In effect, the reporters let perfect be the enemy of good.

Schefter agreed, saying that "What we should have done was reach out to our news desk and said 'Here's where we are.' ... I've relied on my judgment for 20-plus years. By and large my judgment has worked out. This was one time when I could not pin down the story."

A furor erupted last week after country-music legend Hank Williams Jr. compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. By the end of the week, ESPN had severed ties with the longtime curtain-raiser for “Monday Night Football,” a decision that resulted in no small amount of controversy -- as well as a new Hank Jr. song.

ESPN’s decision makes sense in light of its policy on political advocacy and how it has handled similar incidents in the recent past. And, according to one of ESPN’s top executives, it didn’t help that Williams didn’t seem to understand why his comments were a big deal.

On Oct. 3, Williams appeared on the show “Fox and Friends” and said the summer’s “golf summit” featuring House Speaker John Boehner and Obama was “one of the biggest political mistakes ever ... it would be like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”

When one of the Fox hosts said he didn’t understand the analogy, Williams said, “They’re the enemy. ... Obama. And [Vice President Joe] Biden. Are you kidding? The Three Stooges.” Later in the segment, when it was noted he’d invoked Hitler’s name in apparent reference to Obama, Williams said, “That is true, but I’m telling you like it is.” (You can see the clip here.)

John Skipper, ESPN executive vice president of content, told Poynter that after seeing the clip, he and a number of other executives “made a fairly quick decision” to drop the Williams intro from that night’s “Monday Night Football.” Then, Skipper said, they decided to “gather more information from all parties involved."

That additional information took the form of two public statements from Williams. On Monday, after ESPN’s decision not to run the opener, Williams posted a statement on his website that read in part, “I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me -- how ludicrous that pairing was. ... I have always respected the office of the President.”

The next day, Williams followed with another statement: “I have always been very passionate about Politics and Sports and this time it got the Best or Worst of me. The thought of the Leaders of both Parties Jukin and High Fiven on a Golf course, while so many Families are Struggling to get by simply made me Boil over and make a Dumb statement and I am very Sorry if it Offended anyone."

Skipper said ESPN interpreted Williams’ first statement as saying he’d been misunderstood, while his second one didn’t amount to a real apology.

"We reached a decision [last] Wednesday night,” Skipper said. “We felt it was inappropriate to have that song be the opener for ‘Monday Night Football’ given that for a period of time [the Hitler analogy] will be the overwhelming association with Hank. He has every right to voice his opinions, and we have every right to disassociate ourselves from him."

(ESPN also explored the topic on “Outside the Lines” last week.)

ESPN has established policies on political advocacy -- and previously, ESPNers have found themselves in a media tumult after invoking Hitler. ESPN “discourages public participation in matters of political advocacy or controversy among editorial employees, contributors and public-facing talent” and warns that “correspondents, producers, editors, writers, public-facing talent and those involved in news assignments and coverage must avoid being publicly identified with various sides of political issues.”

That policy came up in separate incidents this summer, when ESPN publicly reprimanded golf analyst Paul Azinger for a satirical tweet about how many jobs Obama had created and reportedly spoke privately with Kenny Mayne about a tweeted joke about almost ramming a car with a Sarah Palin bumper sticker “with intent.”

Williams wasn’t an ESPN employee; Skipper said ESPN had a year-to-year contract with Williams to record versions of “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” and license it for the opener. (A rewritten version of “Rowdy Friends,” which was first recorded in 1984, had opened “Monday Night Football” since 1989.) But while he wasn’t an employee, Williams’ association with “Monday Night Football,” and therefore with ESPN, qualified him as public-facing talent.

As for invocations of Hitler, the two most infamous of recent vintage at ESPN involve columnist Jemele Hill and coach-turned-college football analyst Lou Holtz.

In June 2008, Hill sought to tease Detroit Pistons fans who had taken to rooting for the Boston Celtics against the Los Angeles Lakers, writing that rooting for the Celtics “is like saying Hitler was a victim.” Later that year, on “College GameDay,” Holtz was discussing the need for leadership among players in the locker room and said, “Let's remember this: Hitler was a great leader, too. There are good leaders and bad leaders."

Hill apologized and was suspended for a week; Holtz apologized on the air the next day but was not suspended. (Le Anne Schreiber, in her role as ESPN ombudsman, examined the two cases in a November 2008 column.)

Williams’ comments clearly violated ESPN’s policy on political advocacy, but the real problem is that his invocation of Hitler went much further than either Hill’s or Holtz’s did. Hill was poking Pistons fans in a cartoonish way, while Holtz was offering a clumsy warning about good leaders and bad leaders. The comparison wasn’t a good idea in either case, but neither made the kind of explicitly political statement Williams did.

Yes, the singer’s initial statement on “Fox and Friends” was an analogy, but given a chance to clarify his remarks, Williams didn’t back away from talk of Hitler, portraying Obama and Biden as “the enemy.”

On the same day ESPN cut ties with him, Williams posted a new statement on his site: “After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision. By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run.” Over the weekend, the singer recorded “Keep the Change,” an updated version of his own song that jabbed at both “Fox and Friends” and ESPN.

As an aside, Williams’ statement about his decision mixed up the First Amendment with the more general principle of freedom of speech, an error many of his supporters made as well in their emails -- which number in the thousands -- to the Poynter Review Project mailbag. The First Amendment forbids the government from restricting freedom of speech but says nothing about what kind of speech one’s employer or business associate must tolerate.

ESPN chose not to tolerate Williams’ speech, effectively ending a long-standing relationship that had seemed destined to continue.

"If this had not happened, there’s no reason to think we would not have brought the song back next year,” Skipper said.

Former ESPN college football columnist Bruce Feldman debuted his new column at CBSSports.com Thursday. In addition to sharing his picks for this weekend's games, Feldman separately shared with other sports journalists a host of accusations about his departure from ESPN and the company's alleged lies to the Poynter Review Project and the public.

Feldman's story and ESPN's story do not match up.

We spoke with ESPN officials for the previous Poynter Review column on this situation, but not with Feldman, whom we spoke with twice this week - a 12-minute phone call on Thursday and a 35-minute call on Monday. Based on those conversations as well as interviews Feldman gave to Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch and radio host Dan Patrick, we've identified two main criticisms of us that merit responses:

• Feldman says that ESPN Executive Vice President John Skipper instructed him not to participate in an interview with Poynter for a July column on the controversy around Feldman's role in writing a book with former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach.

This is the most serious allegation Feldman makes, because if it's true, it undermines the foundation of Poynter's role in reviewing and publicly commenting on ESPN's efforts.

"It is categorically inaccurate that I told him not to talk to you guys. I am a little displeased with his actions," Skipper said Thursday night on the phone. He said that he called Feldman in July to encourage him to "relax." Feldman responded to that advice by saying, "the Poynter Institute called, I'm going to tell them you're all a bunch of liars," Skipper said.

"I suggested that getting into a public fight with your employer and calling them liars was not wise," he said.

As our column neared its publication in July, Skipper said, "I called Bruce and said, 'If you feel that you need to go on the record with The Poynter Institute, you should do so. I will confess that I said, 'You need to remain careful.' "

Feldman told us during a phone call Thursday evening that his wife was listening back in July when Skipper warned him not to talk to us. We asked if we could talk to her. That's when Feldman hung up the phone, saying he was needed in makeup, and then on air at CBS. He promised to call back but never did, nor did he respond to a text message late in the evening.

• Whether or not it was a formal "suspension," Feldman said that Chad Millman, editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine, never really let him come back to work, preventing him from attending the SEC's media days, enforcing a "do not book" status and insisting on unreasonable editing policies.

Millman told us the same thing on Thursday that he said back in July. He said Feldman was very concerned about showing up at the Southeastern Conference media event and having other reporters focus on him.

"I remember he and I having a conversation that he didn't want to be the eye of the storm and he didn't want to be the story," Millman said. "He was scheduled to go to (SEC) media days and I said, 'It's up to you, but you'll get asked about it.' "

He said they brainstormed alternative events in other conferences where there would be fewer journalists likely to turn the questioning on Feldman. He ultimately did a video segment for ESPN.com from the Pac-12 media day.

"That is not true, the SEC is a big deal to me," Feldman said in response Thursday night. "That is complete B.S. I said to him that the least of my concerns coming out of this is press coverage."

On the "do not book" policy, Millman said talent bookers were constantly asking if they could use Feldman on the air and he told them all yes. On Aug. 8, Feldman appeared on an ESPNU show.

Millman said he did request to see Feldman's Insider column before it was published, and that was a change from their earlier arrangement.

"I wanted to make sure there wasn't a blow up, and be aware of ties to Mike Leach and other coaches, that worked with Leach," he said.

Feldman insisted this was unreasonable because it's not the treatment other Insider writers receive. We think extra editing is always a good thing.

Our initial analysis in this dispute faulted ESPN for allowing Feldman to sign a book deal that had him authoring an autobiography for one of the more controversial figures in college football.

While we originally laid the blame on ESPN, we also suggested that Feldman shared a smaller portion of responsibility for the situation because he failed to seek clarity. Feldman told us and others that he repeatedly sought clarity.

The longest conversation we had with Feldman was Monday afternoon, before he announced his departure to CBS. He called to ask about our sourcing and the editing process. We listened to him for approximately 35 minutes, asking for details and evidence to clarify his assertion that he had repeatedly asked his bosses at ESPN for guidance and that Skipper told him not to talk to us in July.

He described one series of conversations in the Spring of 2010 with editors, which we wrote about in July. And he described conversations with ESPN's lawyers six months before his book was released, but said he did not know if his editors knew he was talking to the lawyers. He didn't provide any details about his conversations with Skipper.

He suggested that his conflicts, created by writing the book, are tiny compared to those of Craig James, the ESPN announcer named in Leach's lawsuit. If the allegations in the lawsuit are accurate -- that James hired a PR firm to smear Leach -- then ESPN has an even bigger problem that we'll certainly be writing about.

But that ethical problem that doesn't overshadow or eliminate ESPN's responsibility when facing other ethical issues. The network should have never let Feldman do the book, because it devalued one their best NCAA football insiders.

The primary ethical failure still rests on ESPN's shoulders. It grows out of a bad policy that allows "as told to" books and a failure of leadership to step in and prevent Feldman from going forward with the book when it became clear that the publication would create an impossible tension.

But if your boss won't protect your credibility, you have to do it yourself. Feldman should have recognized that in writing Leach's book, he was becoming too much of an insider on that topic, walling himself off from too many important stories.

Now his conflicts are CBS Sports' problems. And ESPN, and the Poynter Review Project, are left to address the James issue.

Big audience numbers are expected for the ABC/ESPN broadcasts of this weekend’s Little League World Series games in Williamsport, Pa. That is likely to mean big criticism as well.

ESPN has already attracted its share of disapproving columnists and critics, who argue that a children’s event (these players are all between the ages of 11-13) should not be on national TV. Most of the critics question why we need to see the boys cry.

We say why not? What’s so shameful about little boys crying?

This year, in addition to airing all 32 tournament games, ESPN also broadcast several regional qualifiers.

If you haven’t watched any of the coverage, the games are intense. The draw is obvious. This sporting event is all about the boys, from those who have yet to shed their baby fat to those with a shadow of a teen ‘stache on their upper lip. Metal braces poke out from between their lips. Their ears stick out from under their caps. It's fun to watch boys who are glorious in their boyhood, and happen to be amazing athletes.

The games are remarkably similar. After the boys boogie with Dugout, (we think he’s a bear), the official mascot, they retreat to a coach’s huddle, then retake the field with stoic game faces. That doesn’t last long. By the fourth inning, they look like the boys they are, which is to say intensely competitive and with their emotions as outerwear. They grimace with anxiety, sigh heavily to calm shaky nerves, drop their heads or smack their gloves in frustration when they make mistakes. They hang on the fence in the dugout, begging for a hit. When they lose, sometimes they cry.

The also crack open great big grins when they get on base or make big plays. Because they are so fresh and genuine, their smiles are as endearing as their tears are gut-wrenching.

It’s those faces that make such compelling TV. It’s those same faces that make the critics lash out.

Turning a bright spotlight on children, detractors argue, is over the top.

“They're kids, the kind who still have favorite foods and take cartoon-shaped chewable vitamins.” wrote Jelisa Castrodale of NBC Sports. “I’m not sure they need to choke down two weeks’ worth of nationally televised scrutiny on top of it.”

Others go further, accusing ESPN of exploiting children.

“Allowing the public viewing of pubescent angst under the guise of a baseball game is opportunistic, offensive and just plain wrong,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke.

Here’s the thing: Kids cry when they lose a big game. We shouldn’t turn away from that. It’s not at all shameful for a 12-year-old boy to cry in the face of disappointment. Instead, we should articulate what aspect of those tears is a part of a healthy, normal response -- and what is unhealthy. Our hunch is that folks who accept the grief that comes with losing are comfortable with emotional expression. Those who recoil have their own issues.

Most of the boys cry for the right reason: because they’re sad. It is a singular moment of great sorrow. They had something within their grasp and it slipped away. If 12-year-olds don’t cry a little at moments like that, we as a society should be concerned. Some of the boys crumble for the wrong reasons, because they feel they’ve let down their parents or their coach or some other adult in their life. Or even worse, they equate their failure on the field with failure as a human being.

Such is the consequence of out-of-control, elite-level youth sports, said John Tauer, a psychology professor and head men’s basketball coach at the University of St. Thomas, a Division III university in St. Paul, Minn.

But that’s no reason for ESPN to shy away from airing the Little League World Series, he says.

“I don’t know of any study that has looked at the long-term effects of playing sports on national TV at age 12,” he said. “My hunch is that most of the kids who play in the Little League World Series don’t suffer any adverse effects.”

And for the few who really do emotionally collapse, it’s not because TV cameras are there to witness their failure, he said. It’s because of the toxic environment that surrounds youth sports.

So look at the boys who cry. But you'd better watch close. In response to the intense criticism, ESPN producers work hard to cut away from sobbing boys, said Bill Graff, senior coordinating producer. A camera shot might catch a few tears, but it won’t linger.

“I will tell you that we are very sensitive to kids that get overly emotional,” he said. “We don’t stay on it very long. We won’t stay on a shot of a kid crying. People see that and they say, ‘How in the world can (ESPN) make money showing that kid crying?’ But there may be three instances of that in a whole weekend.”

That’s a noble approach, if maybe a bit misguided. By turning away from the tears, ESPN misses an opportunity to take its coverage of the Little League World Series to the next level. The television audience for LLWS, which at times this week beat out the audience for MLB games aired at the same time, is filled with kids, parents and coaches who would eagerly lap up good information.

Instead of minimizing the intense emotions, we suggest having the resources on hand to explore these difficult moments.

• Bring in an expert to analyze the coach’s interaction with his players. Sure, the coaches are highly guarded when a microphone is clipped to their collars. Even so, much of what they tell their young players is confusing or paralyzing to the players, Tauer said. But occasionally a coach is brilliant. Let the audience in on what works and what's counterproductive.
• Produce segments on how parents should responsibly manage young athletic talent.
• Track down players from a decade or two ago who did not go on to professional sports careers. Then talk to mental health experts about how grown adults put early success into proper perspective.

ESPN takes the middle road with the Little League World Series, for admirable reasons. We say go further. Look the critics and the crying boys in the eyes and ask why. (OK, not literally. But don’t turn away.) Help us all understand what’s healthy and what’s not healthy about intense pressure on young children. Bring more context to this compelling story, not less. It would capitalize on already good TV.

When the NFL lockout ended and the wild week of free agency began, ESPN hit its stride. Before that, the network bumped its way into stories and stumbled and fumbled trying to connect a disinterested audience with a complicated story.

This is how it goes in 24-hour television. This is how it goes in an era of social media and digital delivery. This is how it goes when journalists from one specialty move outside their comfort zone.

It’s not that ESPN did a worse job than other newsrooms covering the NFL labor dispute. To be fair, many newspapers and magazines floundered as well. It’s more that the story was a bad TV story, an awkward fit for ESPN’s talents and a difficult narrative to consume.

Covering a labor dispute is like covering a divorce. And if you’ve ever gone through a divorce or watched one close up, you know that each step is tedious and excruciating. While it’s compelling to the people directly involved in the dispute, the only question anyone else really cares about -- even those who love the two parties in conflict – is, when will this be over so everyone can get on with life?

ESPN knew this from the get-go. At ESPN.com, lockout stories got underwhelming numbers of clicks. TV ratings during the dispute were “soft” as well.

“Our viewers didn’t want to get overloaded with the details of the negotiations. No minutiae. They just wanted to know when it was going to end,” said Seth Markman, ESPN’s senior coordinating producer in charge of NFL, during a phone interview this week.

Even diehard fans struggled to pay attention. We have a couple dozen sports journalism insiders we turn to for advice. To a person, when we asked them their views on lockout coverage, they told us the story itself was so boring, they hardly paid attention.

But ESPN has a lot of resources dedicated to the NFL. And they were producing a lot of information. In addition to the broadcast team of NFL analysts Chris Mortensen, Adam Schefter, Sal Paolantonio and John Clayton, the network hired Andrew Brandt, a former NFL team executive, to augment ESPN’s business knowledge. On top of that, ESPN.com has another dozen bloggers and columnists dedicated to the NFL.

Then there’s the hole: 24 hours of airtime on the main channel and an endless amount of space on the Web. What was the reporting strategy?

“We flood the zone with just about everything. When you have as many reporters and 24/7 outlets as we have, right or wrong, fair or foul, that’s the nature of what we do,” said Patrick Stiegman, vice president and editor-in-chief of ESPN.com. “Clearly, this was a different story to attack. It was esoteric and slow-moving. But that’s the lifeblood of what we do.”

On top of that, sports reporters and analysts are often out of their comfort zone in labor negotiations. That means it was a struggle to know what was news, and what wasn’t. We heard that from sports reporters everywhere, not just those at ESPN. Factor in the social media maelstrom of athletes tweeting their thoughts, and you get a formula for confusion.

The uncertainty was painfully apparent as the owners agreed internally on a settlement and sent a proposal to the players, who decided to ask for more information rather than vote immediately. Journalists everywhere, not just at ESPN, flailed as they tried to describe what was happening.

“We were getting sources saying the players just have to vote,” Markman said. “These were good sources, good reporters.”

As a result, predictions were made -- “soon” “almost over” “24 hours” -- that came and went. Precise language was elusive as well. For example, many reporters insisted on calling the settlement a CBA -- collective bargaining agreement -- when in fact that term only applies to a union negotiation. The players decertified their union and wouldn’t have a CBA until recertification.

If he could do it over, Markman said he would be more cautious about putting a timeline on anything. It’s not just that the sources were wrong; some information, such as when the players would vote, was simply unknowable.

What could ESPN do better, especially as it covers the current NBA labor dispute, which makes the NFL conflict look simple?

Resist the urge to report minute-by-minute, or even the hour-by-hour updates. Minimize live banter in favor of a prepared package that gives an overview of the issue and a roundup of latest developments. Spend those vast resources on context. New information often seems important, simply because it is new. But that same nugget, viewed over time, is often meaningless. Giving the audience an authoritative report once a day may be a better way to serve fans.

Once the lockout ended, ESPN picked up with what the network does well -- covering football. So far, that has meant wall-to-wall reports on which free agents were going where, and which players were being traded. Schefter in particular has broken several big post-lockout stories.

“I’d so much rather be doing this,” Markman said of the transaction frenzy.

“This” is covering football, and issues that affect the way the game is played, as opposed to labor negotiations.

Now that NFL fans are getting what they want -- a football season -- it’s likely that most of the confusion over the lockout coverage will fade. Players will play, fans will watch, and ESPN will tell a more compelling football story.

ESPN couldn’t have scripted a more dramatic soccer story than the U.S. women's national team's quest for a World Cup title. The team's latest match against Brazil generated a lot of buzz -- with questionable calls, a red card, 30 minutes of extra time, and a goal at the last possible minute to force a penalty kick shootout -- that paid off for the network and should carry over to Wednesday's semifinals.

ESPN was in place to capitalize on the thrilling match, thanks to heavy lifting done weeks, months and even years before this week’s final games.

ESPN is betting big on soccer, securing the rights to four rotating summer championships -- the men’s World Cup, the women’s World Cup, the European Championships, and the Confederations Cup. It’s part of a larger strategy to build a U.S. audience for the sport and chip into the world market.

ESPN has a team of 200 people in Germany for the three-week tournament -- that's two-thirds the size of the staff that went to South Africa last year for the men’s World Cup. But it’s comparable, since the women’s tournament has only half the participating teams and fewer locations. And it’s much more ambitious than 2007, when announcers called all the games from a studio in Bristol.

This time around, a giant mobile studio rolls from site to site. Announcers call all the games on location (except for overlapping games, early in the tournament.) And the ESPN production crews help other organizations get interviews and clips, hoping to build demand for the game coverage.

The ratings are skyrocketing, compared to the women’s World Cup four years ago. Sunday afternoon, for example, 3.89 million viewers watched the U.S.-Brazil match. It was the largest American sporting audience all weekend, beating out ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" by a full rating point. The average game in the women's Cup gets 804,000 viewers, so far.

The women's World Cup home page on ESPN.com has generated nearly 1.5 million views, and espnW set a record for traffic Monday, following the U.S. women's victory over Brazil. That same match is also setting records for replays on ESPN3.com.

ESPN executives hope for a similar audience in Wednesday's semifinal match between the U.S. and France, a game competing against mid-week work schedules.

Yet, the numbers are predictably much smaller than last year’s men’s event, when an average of 6.6 million people watched the U.S. group-stage games. But ESPN folks point out that comparing a men’s event to a women’s event is unfair.

So why invest the resources for a smaller audience? It’s got nothing to do with equality, according to Norby Williamson, ESPN executive vice president of studio and event production. It’s about potential new markets.

"I don’t make decisions to put things on the air for our health," he said. "I’m here to drive ratings and monetize and improve the brand."

The level of athleticism and competition in women’s soccer has improved enough recent years to merit ESPN’s full attention.

"Go back and look at a women’s World Cup of 1999," Williamson said. "Outside of the final (in which Brandi Chastain famously clinched the win with a penalty kick), the overall level of play today is much stronger."

Jed Drake, senior vice president and executive producer of World Cup coverage, is the man in charge of bringing specific shape to the event on ESPN. He did the same at last year’s men’s tournament in South Africa.

"We make sure we develop all the stories we can and we make the stories compelling," he said. "Ultimately this is a sporting event and viewers are left to decide. It’s important to recognize the distinction being producers rather than being advocates."

ESPN brought British commentator Ian Darke back after a successful run at the men’s World Cup. By now, you’ve heard him react dozens of times to Abby Wambach's game-tying goal in the 122nd minute against Brazil Sunday: "Can you believe this? Abby Wambach has just saved USA’s life in this World Cup.” Darke and analyst Julie Foudy make a good team.

Along the way, there have been a few bumps. Fans complain in the Poynter Review mailbag about Chastain, now an analyst for ESPN, habitually using the words "we" and "us" when describing the U.S. team. She should break that habit. Others complained the ESPN.com headline "Drama Queens" was sexist. We get that the headline writer was trying to turn the phrase on its head, as in "The U.S. women were the queens of a dramatic event."

The biggest gaffe may have been inserting the U.S.-Brazil game into a Top 10 Most Dramatic Sports Finishes highlight list on "SportsCenter." It’s a premature assertion to make without a little passage of time to offer perspective. And the fans took exception to it, pointing out dozens of other dramatic endings that were left off the list (such as Kerri Strug’s one-footed vault landing to secure a team gold in the 1996 Olympics.) All minor stuff.

By covering the women’s World Cup, ESPN is documenting a riveting international competition featuring the best players and best national teams the world has to offer. It’s great to see women getting the same level of coverage as men. Sure, there’s a long way to go before women athletes have the same opportunities. But getting the same coverage for the same reason -- because there’s money to be made -- is true progress.

A year ago today, ESPN aired "The Decision."

It was the first chapter of a story about hubris that unfolded throughout the entire NBA season, ending a year later with LeBron James still lacking a championship ring and ESPN’s name and reputation forever linked to the debacle.

Since then, the most famous quote from that night, “I'm going to take my talents to South Beach,” has become an oft-spoofed meme on YouTube, a common punchline for late night comedians and even, umm, another euphemism for a favorite pastime of teenage boys.

It was one of the most viewed, and one of the most hated, moments of ESPN television. For ESPN critics, “The Decision” is now shorthand for the network’s arrogance. It doesn’t matter what disgruntled viewers are objecting to -- golf, tennis or baseball -- when they voice their complaint in the Poynter Review Project mailbag, they routinely reference "The Decision" as evidence that ESPN just doesn’t get it.

So a year later, what has the network learned?

No one we spoke with at ESPN suggests that if they had a do-over, they would reject "The Decision" outright. Instead they talk about doing it better.

“I don’t have any regrets,” said Norby Williamson, executive vice president of studio and event production at ESPN, and one of the architects of "The Decision." “It was a huge news event. We were committed to covering it. We would go after it with the same energy and passion.”

Williamson acknowledged in a phone interview that he would execute the broadcast differently today. But he didn’t want to go into detail.

“We still disagree here over how we should have handled it,” said Vince Doria, ESPN's senior vice president and director of news. “If our goal was to get people to watch television, we succeeded."

Doria told us ESPN’s biggest mistake was to try to make "The Decision" look like one seamless show. Viewers couldn’t tell the difference between the part that LeBron and crew controlled and the part that ESPN controlled.

“We should have done it as a press conference, then transitioned into our own show,” Doria said.

"The Decision" and the criticism that followed shined a light on the dual -- some would say schizophrenic -- nature of ESPN. On the one hand it is a journalism organization, specializing in sports news. On the other, it is a production company, covering, and at times staging, big events. Our predecessor, then-ESPN ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer, did an excellent job detailing the dueling loyalties that collided in "The Decision."

Other ironies sprouted from the production. James’ notoriety spiked and stayed high. The crowd loves to hate him. And ESPN benefits from his status as a villain. For example, four of the five most-viewed stories on ESPN.com in the last year related to James. ESPN launched the Heat Index to great success, partially because Miami is now the NBA team everyone loves to hate.

Describing how he would change things if he had a mulligan, Doria added, “We probably wouldn’t pay him either.” Sure, James donated the profits to the Boys and Girls Club.

But his team got to sell the ads and then decide what to do with the money. ESPN policy forbids payment to sources in exchange for news. That was the policy a year ago as well. Yet that’s exactly what happened here, as Ohlmeyer pointed out.

ESPN isn’t above marking the first anniversary of that notorious hour of television without a hint of irony. “Taking my talents” was the refrain in a "SportsNation" Autotune mash up Wednesday afternoon. "SportsCenter" aired its own montage on Thursday. ESPN.com revisited the spectacle as well.

Both Doria and Williamson look back on "The Decision" as a unique beast without a lot of bearing on the day-to-day choices at the network.

“We could have done everything right and people would still be angry about LeBron,” Doria said.

Sure, but fans wouldn’t conflate their anger toward LeBron with their anger toward ESPN. No matter how normal ESPN tries to make "The Decision" appear, it will forever remain in the minds of fans a target of deserving scorn.