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Longtime ESPN host Michael Wilbon unleashed an expletive-laced rant against The New York Times on Wednesday, blasting the paper over its treatment of sports writers.
While appearing on “The Dan Le Batard Show,” host Dan Le Batard pointed out that The New York Times was the only major publication that did not allow its sports writers to appear on Wilbon’s ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption.”
Wilbon, who began his career in print journalism and spent decades at The Washington Post before joining ESPN full-time in 2010, accused the Times of abandoning the sportswriting industry.
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ESPN host Michael Wilbon, seen here with Tony Kornheiser on “Pardon the Interruption,” criticized The New York Times for not letting its sports writers appear on the ESPN show. (Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“They bailed,” Wilbon said. “They were the first to bail. F— The New York Times. I work for a better section anyway. You think I wouldn’t take a section with Tom Boswell, and Dave Kindred, and Tony Kornheiser, and Sally Jenkins, and David Remnick, and David Aldridge, and J.A. Adande — and I’m skipping a whole generation of people — Barry Lorge, the greatest tennis writer of all time? Half those people went to television.”
He continued, “F— The New York Times, which bailed on our profession. It bailed. It took the sports section away. Gutless motherf——!”
Fox News Digital reached out to The New York Times for comment. ESPN declined to comment.
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The New York Times dissolved its sports department after acquiring The Athletic. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Wilbon was likely referring to The New York Times announcing in 2023 that it would be closing its internal sports department and instead focus on covering teams and games through The Athletic, which it acquired one year earlier.
Though there were no layoffs from the acquisition, the sports department at the Times had grown smaller and smaller in the years prior to the purchase. The desk eventually lost its stand-alone section in the daily print and local teams were no longer guaranteed an assigned beat reporter.
New York Times staffers have since petitioned to have The Athletic staffers join their union.
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“The Times bought a separate company; they then disbanded their own sports desk and now uses that company as their sports department,” New York Times senior editor Jim Luttrell told Fox News Digital in May. “They’re doing the same work that all the other journalists here do that the sports journalists did here before. There is no reason they shouldn’t be in the union.”
ESPN host Michael Wilbon. (Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital’s Nik Lanum contributed to this report.