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With this column, the Poynter Review Project's work comes to an end. After nearly 40 columns reviewing ESPN content across all platforms, we'll close with lessons learned over 18 months of observing the network's various media outlets, examining ...

One of the biggest discrepancies between sports journalism and the rest of journalism is the attitude toward rumors. In most of journalism, rumors are a bad thing. Not just a bad thing, but something respectable reporters try to avoid. That does...

Media organizations today face a host of new pressures, from the growing number of rivals reporting news to the increasing importance of social media in disseminating and sharing that news. Amid such rapid change, news outlets such as ESPN face chall...

With the National Football League once again laying claim to fans' Sundays, ESPN rolled out a five-day package of investigative reporting and feature stories last month across its various platforms -- ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine, ESPN Radio, "SportsC...

When U.S. swimmer Missy Franklin won Olympic gold in the 100-meter backstroke, journalists got to test their storytelling skills. ESPN the television network and ESPN.com took vastly different approaches. Those two ESPN platforms illustrate what ...

Late last month, Jarrod Rudolph, an Orlando, Fla., writer for RealGM.com, tuned in to the 10 p.m. edition of "SportsCenter." A little more than an hour earlier, Rudolph had reported that Orlando Magic general manager Rob Hennigan had met with Dwight ...

Earlier this month, ESPN basketball reporter Chris Broussard found himself at the center of a Twitter furor over his coverage of free-agency decisions by NBA guards Deron Williams and Eric Gordon. Many sports fans watching Twitter on July 3 conclu...

This past fall, the Poynter Review Project was critical of ESPN's early coverage of the scandal at Penn State, which we found slow, scattershot and tone deaf, too often giving short shrift to the terrible truth that children had been sexually abused....

Brian Windhorst remembers the day the Miami Heat cried -- and how Twitter changed his story. Windhorst, an ESPN.com NBA writer, is a fan of Twitter, the 6-year-old service that marries the speed and brevity of text messaging with the reach of soci...

Recently we sat down with ESPN interviewing guru John Sawatsky at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., to watch a number of interviews conducted by ESPN reporters and anchors. Here is the Poynter Review Project's brief critique of the three we chose,...

For eight years, John Sawatsky has made ESPN his laboratory for deciphering the science of interviewing. A former investigative reporter, he has worked with the network's reporters, producers, anchors and other talent to put his philosophy into pract...

How does ESPN assess advertisements for its networks? And why does it sometimes reject them? The answers sometimes depend not just on the ads themselves, but on where those ads send viewers and what they find there. That issue came up late last mo...

Legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight has long done things his way, and his five years as an ESPN analyst have been no different. Knight prefers to call himself a basketball consultant rather than a member of the media, and wears sweaters lik...

ESPN.com's Jemele Hill did a very nice, tight column this week explaining how the lives of professional athletes are connected to the life and death of Trayvon Martin. Contrast that to ESPN's bouncing back and forth on whether its talent can post ...

Earlier this month, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made an anti-gay joke at the expense of Grantland's Bill Simmons while the two were onstage in front of a large audience at a well-known sports conference -- a remark excised from a podcast record...

The rise of Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks' Asian-American star, has been one of 2012's feel-good sports stories. But it's come with an unwelcome undercurrent: racial references by fans, columnists and TV personalities that have ranged from innocent...