Robert Lipsyte was the fifth ESPN Ombudsman after George Solomon, Le Anne Schreiber, Don Ohlmeyer and the Poynter Institute. Lipsyte’s term finished in December of 2014 after serving 18 months in the role.

During his time, Lipsyte wrote about a whole range of issues including the suspensions of Stephen A. Smith and Bill Simmons, the Penn State affair, the role of journalism at ESPN and the infamous Grantland Dr. V story.

Lipsyte came to ESPN after a storied career with the New York Times as both a sportswriter and columnist. He was a reporter at NBC News and CBS News, worked with Howard Cosell on his ABC SportsBeat show, contributed to ESPN (before his Ombudsman stint) and has written several fiction and non-fiction books.

Awful Announcing recently spoke with Lipsyte about his time as ESPN Ombudsman and on his thoughts about some of the issues that arose during his tenure.

Awful Announcing: Let’s start from the beginning. When did you get the call to become the ESPN Ombudsman and what was your reaction?

Robert Lipsyte: Well, it was a great surprise. The call came from John Walsh, the great Albino guru of ESPN and really in many ways, their soul. I had worked with him many years before at Inside Sports and I had always liked and respected him. I didn’t know that ESPN had an ombudsman (laughs). But he didn’t call offering me the job, he called me to tell me that I was on the short list and if I could be interviewed and I said sure.

That night, I went to a play with some out-of-town relatives and my wife called “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” and one of the writers of that was Dan Okrent who had been the New York Times’ first Ombudsman and I’m kind of a great believer in omens. At that point I decided that they were going to give me the job.

AA: When you got the job, how did you get ready? Did you read the past Ombudsmen’s work? And when you got the job, how did you define the position?

RL: I saw the job as being ESPN’s window washer, that the goal was transparency, that the audience would understand why it made the decisions or didn’t make the decisions, and that I would have access to everybody, that I would blog every week. I would be on the shows that I was writing about, talking to the hosts and I would be kind of an ESPN presence. That’s not how it turned out.

What they wanted was one big piece once a month. I wrote more than that actually and that kind of worked out. The other thing that I had thought about and I’m not sure that was a decision I was correct about was that I decided not to embed, not to go up there a lot and a hang out, that I would be a distant observer and read their stuff and watch their programs and operate from that point of view.

But other than that, it was pretty much mine to figure out. The only thing they told me was the one thing they really didn’t want me to do was mete out discipline, that they would not let me say “he should be fired” and that was fine.

AA: Did you talk to any of the previous Ombudsmen before you took or after you took the position just to get a feel for the job?

RL: The only one I talked to was Le Anne Schreiber who was the number two Ombudsman. She had been a sports editor at the (New York) Times and is a very fine writer. She really didn’t have a lot to say. Things had changed so much at ESPN over the years. I mean it really had become a monster and the basic issue at ESPN had not changed which was conflict of interest.

AA: And you still see that now?

RL: Oh, I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. That’s kind of built in. My conceit is that sports journalism began around the turn of the last century when Bat Masterson left Dodge City and moved to New York to become a sportswriter. So what he did was that he wrote about for the New York Telegraph the events that he promoted and that he owned and that he bet on. And I think in some sort of cosmic way, ESPN does the same thing. They make corporate bets on leagues and bowls and teams, it owns events, it created the SEC Network, and it purports to journalistically cover it. I think this is very difficult.

AA: And in this role as the owner, promoter and purveyor, will this continue at ESPN? Where do you see this going?

RL: I think until somebody catches up with them and obviously it’s not going to be Fox, they’re just going to go on until the world changes. I mean the world always changes. Companies disappear. Boxing which was so big when I was starting out really doesn’t exist now as such anymore.

I think what they really need to do for their souls is to spin off the journalism enterprise and really make it separate, you know, put a wall in between it. But I think that’s difficult and I think that it’s so important, forget about the Ombudsman, that sites like yours are on their tail all the time. They do have to be held accountable. The mirror has to be held up to them. They can’t for a moment forget that they have an enormous responsibility just because they have too much power.

AA: Two interesting things that happened during your watch was the Frontline “League of Denial” documentary and the Bill Simmons suspension. You wrote about them both, but now that you’re free from ESPN, what do you really think about what happened with both incidents?

RL: Exactly what I wrote. I really have to say at the risk of sounding like a houseman, I was very taken by ESPN’s spirit and its professionalism. I met a lot of really good, talented people. And I think most of the mistakes they made, and they made a lot of mistakes, really came out of that rub of the conflict of interest or people who kind of acted on their own.

I mean Bill Simmons is kind of an inflated character. I think that he was wrong in calling (Roger) Goodell a liar whether or not he was a liar. I think journalistically you have the goods or you don’t and I think he got into real trouble by challenging, I mean in the worst kind of adolescent way, “Fuck you, dad.” Well, BANG! “You don’t say that at my dinner table!”

The concussion thing? I was never able and I tried, I was never able to find the smoking gun. The New York Times claims that it did. I talked to Jim Miller who wrote the book (on ESPN) and wrote the article and he told me he had two unimpeachable sources which he wouldn’t tell me, but those are his sources. I never could find the gun. I mean it does really seem logical that the NFL was freaking out. Here was this multimillion dollar settlement coming up and even worse the possibility of a trial in which (the NFL) would have to disclose that they had suppressed evidence of brain damage. And so I think in this freaking out, (the NFL) wanted its business partner to take a step back from the documentary. They did. They blinked. But at the same time, I think that ESPN’s reporting was the most solid … ESPN stayed on the story and the Fainaru brothers did I think an outstanding job.

I think those were two of the biggest stories on my watch although I think concussions was really the big story. I think Simmons is an entertainer.

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About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013.

He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television.

Fang celebrates the four Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.

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