ON THE DL

Josh Elliott Talks Blog Buzz, Journalistic Integrity, Hannah Storm’s Wardrobe and So Much More

Josh Elliott, host of the 9-12 SportsCenter, joins the show to talk about, well, everything from his daily routine to the journalistic integrity of live SC to Sports Illustrated to reading and promoting blogs to Hannah Storm’s daily blouse selection. We cover a lot.

But first, we start with a day in the life of a SportsCenter anchor. Has his life changed since he started doing the live shows, and what does he do when his work day ‘ends’ at noon?

I ask Elliott if he knows what his target audience is with a show that runs from 9a-12p every day. Are there people actually watching the show, or is it just Brian Powell at Awful Announcing who then aggregates everything for us? Elliott reminds me that there are people who live on the west coast (of the Mississippi River? - us easterners didn’t think there was much past that point) and that out in his hometown of LA, it’s 6a-9a and right in the wheelhouse of a morning routine.

The hardest thing for ESPN was to give people something that had more value than showing the 1AM SportsCenter over and over again, sometimes the same show two and three times.

“You probably think to yourself, like a lot of people probably do, ‘wow I need some help’ and you turn the TV off. But you watch three times. So it was actually a concern of mine, personally when we started, that we were going to be, to a degree, methadone for America. We were going to have to help America kick their addiction to SportsCenter on a continuous loop.”

He also brings up the point that doing a live SportsCenter is the journalistically responsible thing to do with how much news is broken by online news outlets and sports blogs throughout the day. To Elliott, having a rerun of the previous night’s SC is not serving the audience properly.

We’ve had a lot of ESPN people on our show and many of the radio and TV personalities have claimed that they are exactly that -- personalities. I bring up the example of Mike Greenberg who has made no bones about the fact that he’s an entertainer and not a journalist anymore, and as evidenced by their waxing routine this week, I think we can all agree on that. But Greenberg still does the occasional SportsCenter, so I ask the question to Elliott: is SportsCenter journalism, or are they just talking heads?

“I sure hope it is (journalism). Especially in my former life as a writer at SI, a lot about the TV business I found really difficult. Difficult to wrap my mind around. Difficult to appreciate the nuances of it, the subtleties of it, but also the gray area -- where do you stop being a journalist and start being an entertainer?”

He credits his ability to balance this gray area to Bob Ley, who helped him a great deal when he started doing SC after nearly ruining ESPN Classic (he says it, not me). He also explains that he writes his own content and formulates his own questions for the interviews. But there is a balance, and he understands that certain things move the needle more than others.

“It’s a hard juggling act. I’ll say this -- I have to fight not to pull back the curtain sometimes -- but yesterday on the show I realized (Mike Golic getting waxed) moves the needle. I realized people, if only for the garish shock value of it all, probably want to see a little bit of it. But for me, I’d kind of had enough of it by the end of, I believe, the second hour.

“And there was a question of if we should spend more time on that at the end of the second hour of the show yesterday or should we do the highlight between Chelsea and Barcelona playing in the Champions League semifinal. A huge sporting event globally. A sporting event that did a number collectively on continents that rivals what the Super Bowl does here. Most of Europe shut down to watch. Yet Hannah and I were going to bury it so we had a bit more time to react to Mike Golic’s lack of body hair. I found that to be, to a degree, journalistically irresponsible.”

Agreed. And Elliott continues to discuss the gray area, bringing up private discussions he had with his bosses regarding Greenberg’s ability to do a football-heavy SportsCenter when he is such an unabashed (and public) Jets fan. He makes it clear to not challenge Greenberg’s ability as a journalist, but points out that he does make the most of his living as an entertainer. It’s a balancing act for everyone, including Elliott who loves all things LA and find that his favoritism comes out in his telecast.

We talk about his time at Sports Illustrated. Does he miss not having to be pretty every day? Doesn’t he wish he could trade in the suit for a ball cap and sweats every so often? And how many PINK TIES does he own? Man alive, we know it’s in HD but so many pink ties, Josh. He claims many are red. Sure they are.

We also discuss why an organization like Sports Illustrated has never been able to challenge ESPN. With the brand name that SI has earned in the industry, why did they never take that leap to be a legitimate challenger to the WWL?

Which leads to a conversation about how ESPN can have a hand in every part of the industry -- print, web, radio, TV -- and can face challenges from companies in each area but never as a whole (they’re like sports media Voltron). Where has Fox been in all of this? Doesn’t Fox have the ability, with their coffers and their football (and futbol) contracts to really challenge ESPN?

We shift back to SportsCenter to talk about the new segment - Blog Buzz. It’s been getting a lot of buzz lately, so how does it work? Turns out, Elliott doesn’t know. He just reads what’s given to him (see, talking head - kidding). But he does read the blogs every day and was pushing for a segment like this for a while now on SC. In fact, he wants a blogger to be live on the phone every day to talk about the top stories. Better put that on a five-second delay ESPN, some of us can work blue.

I ask Elliott how much of the Blog Buzz is getting actual news out there they wouldn’t otherwise cover on ESPN and how much of it is just to say ‘look we read blogs so that makes us cool too, right?’ It seems like a good idea for a segment on SC and it does bring up other stories that they wouldn’t talk about, but doesn’t it scream ‘look how progressive we are’ from the ESPN brass?

“Everybody struggles to define the blogosphere. And invariably, it’s really one of those things where the second you try to describe it you’ve already limited it. You’ve already hemmed it in some way. Because its very nature is this place without parameters -- without boundaries that’s always going to be something that somehow is going to feel tied up once you start talking about it. That’s always going to be something that’s going to feel smaller the second you acknowledge it because it almost has to start somewhere.

“We, as a dominant entity, have to be very aware of -- and tread lightly with -- an entity that is at once vast and huge on a scale that nothing in media has ever seen before, but also still finding its way, still figuring ways around itself and still figuring out ways to police itself and figuring out who is reputable and who is not...who can be trusted and who can’t.

“If we, by discussing it on our air, contribute to that evolution, then so be it. With everything at ESPN the question that stands as something of an elephant in the living room is, to what extent are we reporting news or offering information and to what extent are we shaping news or creating news and shaping information and creating information. It’s something we fight with all the time.”

We joke about what Daulerio said at Deadspin with regard to Blog Buzz in that we should all stuff the ballot to talk about Hannah Storm’s wardrobe so Elliott has to talk about it on the show. Not only does Elliott think the idea is hilarious, he finds the concept of having to actually talk about that on the air hilarious as well. “Laugh-out-loud in a meta way,” as he puts it. And as it turns out, she’s well aware of the blogosphere’s infatuation with her attire.

“I believe (Hannah) has a Google Alert now set to find out if there are others -- you know, the on-going saga that is her wardrobe choice.

“When it comes to Hannah and her wardrobe -- I feel like I should preface this by saying I can’t imagine what it is to be a woman in this business. It is infinitely harder on every level -- with Hannah, she dresses the way she dresses. She’s sort of genuinely fascinated by the fascination. There was a period where she was a bit embarrassed by all the attention. I can’t imagine having to think about that. You’ve seen my hair. The American television viewing audience has seen my hair. I can’t imagine having to really be concerned about what I look like every day.”

I ask if people who are in the public spotlight read the things written about them, as many have told me both on and off the record that they do not:

“I read all the sites that rip me. I read all the sites that think I do a halfway decent job. Again, as a journalist, I think it’s your responsibility to seek out information. I’m not going to name any specific names, I would say this -- if people are telling you that they’re not reading, I’d question that. Personally, I’d question that. If journalists are avoiding information, if journalists are saying that they are avoiding this incredible vast new medium...if people whose job it is to call information and know what’s happening are saying that they don’t dip their toe in the pool, that’s insane. To me, personally, I can’t imagine not.”

My last question for Elliott is the most important. Is ESPN going to create a follow-up segment to Blog Buzz called Dan Levy Interviews ESPN Personalities. Watch for it in 2017!

A long, winding road and a fascinating interview, personally. Thanks for hanging with us this week.

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