With Sports Illustrated in the middle of a round of layoffs, at least one staffer is leaving on her own terms.
Charlotte Wilder announced yesterday that it was her final day at SI:
It's a very strange time to have some personal news, but today was my last day at Sports Illustrated. I'm beyond grateful for my coworkers — past and present — who have become my best friends, and for the many stories I was lucky enough to tell
— Charlotte Wilder (@TheWilderThings) April 3, 2020
Wilder is moving to Fox Sports, where she’ll have a digital role:
Very excited to say that I'm heading to @FOXSports, where I'll be a multimedia jack of all trades on a number of different digital platforms. I'll try my best to tell stories and make jokes that might provide a little lightness in this tough time (I'll also play the air drums)
— Charlotte Wilder (@TheWilderThings) April 3, 2020
Wilder hosted an online video series, The Wilder Project, for SI, and she’s worked for SB Nation in the past as well. The move also raises more questions about what Fox Sports is doing on the digital side. Ever since the infamous, disastrous pivot to video in 2017, their digital operation has been fairly barren. Recently, though, there have been signs that they’re ramping it back up.
Ben Koo wrote about some of those signs last month:
Fast forward to a few weeks ago (around the time [Bob] Pockrass would have to renegotiate a one year deal), and there was an interesting change he needed to announce.
There it is, folks. Click the above link and you’ll see the sports media version of Bigfoot: an actual article that you can read on FoxSports.com. It’s got punctuation, paragraphs, photos, and just about all the fixings you’d want to help yourself to at a word buffet.
And it’s not just Pockrass banging away on a keyboard as part of a literary insurgency at Fox Sports. Jason McIntyre has been steadily producing content for the website as well. McIntyre wasn’t retained when his former writing home, The Big Lead, was sold to Minute Media, who preferred a new editorial path forward. For years, McIntyre wrote on the site he founded and sold, despite being a television and radio regular for Fox. Now, his written work is (finally) under the Fox banner.
Wilder joining is another sign that Fox Sports is going to put more into a site that for a long time now has featured little beyond clips from various FS1 shows, or highlight videos from games or events.
Oh, one more thing: @FOXSports LET’S GOOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/q20SLOPe1s
— Charlotte Wilder (@TheWilderThings) April 3, 2020
Considering the overall trends of the industry, having a company like Fox opening things back up for writers and creators actually serves as a bit of good news, all things considered.
[image via SI TV]
