Sports stories draw eyeballs. Race stories stoke debate. Now Jason Whitlock, the well-known but divisive ESPN columnist once fired by the network, is betting that putting them together will make a winning combination.
The Undefeated, an ESPN site on race, sports, and culture for African Americans, which Whitlock once dubbed “Black Grantland,” released its first story Thursday ahead of the NBA All-Star Weekend. A prelude to the site’s full launch as early as June, the story was posted to ESPN.com. It is a 9,000-word profile of controversial pundit and former NBA star Charles Barkley that traces his outspoken comments on race to Booker T. Washington and their shared home state of Alabama.
The profile is an example of the kind of reporting Whitlock, the site’s founder, says can use sports as a lens to look at larger society.
“The right-wing guy and the left-wing guy may both be Patriots fans,” he said. “If our website uses events around the Patriots to make a point about America at large, now I’m the person that has the right-wing and left-wing guy in the exact same conversation,” he said. “That’s not the case anywhere else in American media.”
Even if sports audiences can be an example of multiculturalism, the same is not always the case among sportswriters. A 2012 study by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida showed 91 percent of sports editors at major American publications were white, as were 86 percent of reporters.
One aim of The Undefeated is to be an incubator for young journalists of color, and ESPN has made a team of 10 so far, including Whitlock. Big hires have arrived in the last six months, including Washington Post sports columnist Mike Wise, Ebony Editor in Chief Amy DuBois Barnett, and Jesse Washington, who reported on race for the Associated Press. More editorial staff are set to come before the summer, said Whitlock.
His aim is to put out four to six stories per day, pitching The Undefeated as a “thought leader” and leaning more on intelligent analysis and social issues than chasing the regular sports news cycle. Black leadership, the disproportionate imprisonment of ethnic minorities, and gang violence are themes Whitlock has written about and which retain his interest. “I would say 60 percent of our stories will have a sports connection, but anything impacting African American culture is fair game for us,” he said.
Like Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight or Bill Simmons at Grantland, Whitlock’s new project has the potential to be a niche site driven by a big personality. Yet its launch has been in limbo since Whitlock announced it in August 2013.
“I have a unique history with ESPN,” said Whitlock. “There are some internal things that have to be put in place to support the kind of work that I want to do. And to get everyone internally on board with something that they initially could not see.”
He was fired from ESPN in 2006 after publicly attacking colleagues Mike Lupica and Scoop Jackson in an interview with sports blog The Big Lead. Deadspin called Whitlock “sports media’s Black Pope” for the hiring power he now has for his ESPN site while highlighting his penchant for provocative attacks on black culture. A former offensive lineman for Ball State University in Indiana, he made his name as a columnist at the Kansas City Star, carving his niche in race and sports. With his return to ESPN, this time as editor of his own site, will the polarizing Whitlock be writing stories himself? “Absolutely,” he said.
Chris Ip is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisiptw.