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Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

The Sports Illustrated Layoffs

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3721 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2019

⏱️ 83 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode 72 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features four former Sports Illustrated staffers who were let go last week by The Maven, the Seattle-based startup that leased Sports Illustrated's media operations from the Authentic Brands Group.  The first segment features Mary Agnant, a producer and filmmaker who worked for Sports Illustrated Video for three years. Agnant worked on many video initiatives and directed one of the best things SI has ever produced – a documentary (“The Logan Effect”) about Humboldt Broncos' Logan Boulet, one of the 16 people killed in the horrible bus crash involving that hockey team. She is joined by Scooby Axson, who worked at Sports Illustrated and SI.com for seven years there, covering everything from CFB, NFL, NBA, and MLB. Axson spent 16 years in the military, serving tours in Bosnia and Iraq prior to working at SI. The second segment features Tim Rohan, who worked at Sports Illustrated for 3.5 years as an NFL writer and was previously a writer for the New York Times. The serialized podcast re-examining the death of Steve McNair that Rohan hosted and help create – “Fall of a Titan” — was recognized as one of the best sports podcasts of 2018. He is joined by Joan Niesen, a talented staff writer at Sports Illustrated for nearly six years. Niesen covered a multitude of sports and events for SI including the College Football Playoff, Super Bowl, The Masters, Stanley Cup Finals, and World Series. In this podcast, the guests discuss what they did for Sports Illustrated; how they and the SI staff learned of the layoffs; whether they had any indication it was coming; the callous nature of how they and their colleagues were told they were losing their jobs; whether they hoped for a different resolution for SI; what working for SI has been like for the best couple of years; what they think the future holds for Sports Illustrated under The Maven; what they hope to do in their careers heading forward; how you can contact them if interested in hiring them, and much more.  You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and more To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:33.5

Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen. Hey everybody, this is Richard Dich and welcome to the sports media podcast.

0:38.5

My producer, as always, is Patrick Antonetti.

0:40.9

This podcast is going to be a little bit different this week.

0:43.1

There's four people coming on, but this is sort of a personal one for me.

0:48.3

My guests are some incredibly talented people who were laid off by the Maven last week.

0:55.2

The Maven is the company now that is running Sports Illustrated media operations.

1:03.6

And so it was an awful week for them, an awful week for sports journalism.

1:10.0

And the publishing company the maven

1:12.6

basically laid off you know it'll be around whatever it turns out to be 35 40 45% of sports

1:19.6

illustrated editorial staff uh just decimated and people with decades of experienced uh told they had to basically get out of the building incredibly quickly.

1:31.4

It was disgraceful.

1:33.0

The reports, you've read the reports from the Washington Post and the dead spins, etc.

1:38.0

About this.

1:39.0

So my guests are Mary Agnet, who is an incredibly talented producer and filmmaker for Sports

1:47.7

Illustrated, work for Sports Illustrated video for three years, had an unbelievable documentary

1:52.5

on the Humboldt Broncos player, Logan Boulay, who was one of the 16 people killed in

1:58.5

that horrible bus crash involving that team. She is joined by

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