CBS Sports has continued to drop talent like a bad habit, laying off national baseball columnists Danny Knobler and Scott Miller according to a report from Deadspin.
NFL writer Mike Freeman left the site this summer to join Bleacher Report, and earlier in the summer, CBS let go of some editorial staffers and NFL columnist Clark Judge. In May, Jeff Goodman jumped ship and joined ESPN and former CBS colleague Brett McMurphy, who joined the four-letter last year. CBS has responded to all of these losses by hiring… well, fewer old school journalist types and more new school blogger types. (Note: I’m not using the term blogger derisively. It’s what I’m doing right now)
CBS hasn’t kept up with other outlets in the media arms race. This is true both on television where CBS Sports Network is well behind the competition and online as well. Part of that is CBS’s strategy at the moment and part of that is surely meeting the bottom line. Their last big hire was Bruce Feldman, and that was what, two years ago? There’s still a lot of talent there, but the brain drain of late is really sapping a lot of quality writers from their site. This could be a sign that CBS Sports is going to continue moving towards emulating NBC Sports and their aggregation style of writing as opposed to ESPN’s style of reporting and production of original content.
[Deadspin]
