The New York Times
ESPN learned last week that, to tweak the adage, hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned.
The fury in this case belongs to A. J. Daulerio, editor of Deadspin.com, a sports blog, who contends that ESPN misled him about sexual impropriety by Steve Phillips, one of the sports networks on-the-air analysts. Mr. Phillips was fired on Sunday.
Last week, Mr. Daulerio posted on Deadspin rumors of sexual liaisons and harassment involving several other ESPN employees, some of whom are married to other people, along with headlines linking ESPN to phrases like “sexual depravity.”
In an account of his dealings with ESPN, Mr. Daulerio wrote last week, “well, it’s probably about time to just unload the in-box of all the sordid rumors weve received over the years about various ESPN employees.”
Even in the free-for-all of the Internet, this was a bracing position for a well-known site that, according to Quantcast, gets more than 150,000 visitors daily. More…