Ryan Glasspiegel
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Bob Ley, the longtime stalwart of ESPN who retired in 2019 after four decades with the network, weighed in on the news that 300 people are being laid off and 200 open positions will not be filled:
Trying to remain objective and unemotional as I learn of the @espn team members laid off today. Not possible. Not as I see countless decades of journalistic experience, and expertise jettisoned. Just when we need it most. Enjoy the DIS stock price and your NFL football.
— Bob Ley (@BobLeyESPN) November 5, 2020
There are few people in the history of the network whose words would carry as much weight as Ley’s do. “From the day he started to almost 40 years later now, Bob Ley has been our conscience,” Chris Berman said of Ley in 2018.
For the context behind ESPN’s announcement, check out our story from earlier today.
Not to be cold-hearted but welcome to the real world where this happens to people all the time.
Maybe they can all pat themselves on the back for being so woke that it contributed to ESPN losing revenue. If they had focused on sports instead of social justice they might not have had to cut so many people.
How many of them had nothing to do most of the day?
Id be curious if you’d be able to pin down the specific time when/if u could see the correlation between ESPN going left wing liberal fucking crazy and their demise in the sport’s reporting/entertainment business. I know it happened. But it would be an interesting study. I hardly watch that channel anymore. Van Pelt and Stanford Steve. That’s it. They should move to Outkick. ESPN will be like MTV in a couple of years. I’ll turn it on when I Want My 80s and 90s sports segments are on and I’m feeling nostalgic. Maybe an old Roy Firestone interview. The good ol days!
Brock-
You should read Clay’s new book.
Outkick is about to get an assload of resumes.
Well, Bob, you should have spoken up when the ratings were tanking after your colleagues got woke en masse. Who knows, maybe you did.
Though there is some satisfaction watching an enterprise like ESPN go woke, adopt the far left banner of everything is free, then succumb to real world economics.
The unemployed “Woke” must now awaken.Welcome back to the “real world” !
Sorry Bob, but “…countless decades of journalistic experience and expertise…” have not been applicable to ESPN for years now. The trust factor eroded rather quickly around the time ESPN got woke and has not really slowed down since. I can’tt believe they only laid off this many. The legacy media that ESPN is a part of (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc) never get my eyes and ears anymore and I know there are others that feel the same. The Daily Wire and Outkick are where I spend a large part of my time reading news stories or being entertained. ESPN is on the same trajectory as the Do-do bird.