What Zach Lowe Getting Laid Off Means

ESPN is becoming a shell

In an absolute sports media shocker, preeminent NBA writer and podcaster Zach Lowe was laid off from ESPN on Thursday. Based on my experience getting axed over there in 2017, I’d imagine that yesterday was horrible for him. I’d also guess that today is a lot better.

After you make it through the initial stage of feeling rejected and totally destabilized, a newly ex-ESPNer can experience an unexpected emotion: Relief. Yes, Lowe is highly respected and well remunerated. His is the sort of job people are jealous of. But the reality of working within Bristol’s bureaucracy is usually awful. It’s actually worse if you’re a star because different elements of the massive company are pulling you in opposite directions, fighting behind the scenes over what your actual job is. Nobody is in charge of making your schedule actually make sense, and since people are getting fired all the time, there’s a desperation behind everyone’s attempt to get a piece of you.

I’m not saying you should break out a violin for Zach Lowe. Actually, quite the opposite. He’s been liberated from a toxic work environment. Also, getting let go in this manner allows for the unusual experience of being Tom Sawyer at his own funeral. As in, you’d typically have to die to receive such loudly earnest compliments about yourself. I know that sounds like a frivolous benefit, but having gone through it at a smaller scale, I can tell you it’s really touching. Not only is there all that online praise, but people who’d never felt compelled end up sending thank you emails. It’s really cool, at least once you’re in the head space to engage.

Anyway, you’d think Bristol would better value a famous NBA observer who can write, study film, work high level sources, translate the salary cap, podcast and do TV hits. I’d also add that, in his various settings, Zach is an underrated incisive interviewer. It’s just so unusual that anyone in media has so many skills strung together, and part of me wonders if it’s a waste to force a guy with such versatility to understand what’s going on with Detroit Pistons free agency.

I know Lowe was an expensive employee, but after Sam Ponder got axed, my takeaway was that versatility protects talent at the World Wide Leader. Apparently not. If you’re pricey, you’re vulnerable at an institution that’s hemorrhaging money. ESPN/Disney decided to pay $2.6 billion per year for NBA rights even though NBA viewership has declined over the last decade. That’s a great haul for commissioner Adam Silver but less ideal for those working within the institution paying massive increases. The $2.6 billion rate is justified (mostly) on the basis of maintaining cable carriage fees, but the short term upshot is “more money spent for less advertising revenue.” The difference has to be made up somewhere. To survive, ESPN becomes more about spending everything to maintain sports rights, and less about, as Bill Simmons put it, quality investments in “having a soul.”

How does this latest move connect to the recent surprise retiring of (even more expensive) Adrian Wojnarowski? My issues with Woj aside, it’s just part of the general trend of this company becoming a shell. We saw this with newspapers. As the profits decline, the moves become more about baseline survival than investing. You could argue that ESPN should have better monetized the Lowe Post podcast and sure. But even improvements that could conceivably return desperately needed money are harder to pull off for corporations on the wane. I’ve worked at such places. When people are getting fired all the time and morale is low, the mandate becomes more about dying slower than ambitiously seizing the future.

As ESPN weakens, it becomes a less obvious host for healthy talent. Enter Substacker Paul, referencing my “Sadly, if You Want to Make Money in Sports Writing, Your Content Had Better Be Useful to Gamblers” post.

Rarely has an article been shown to be right so definitively and quickly – as for this article, today with the news that ESPN has laid off Zach Lowe.

Once upon a time Lowe was the absolute best basketball writer of the breed Ethan describes, whom he came up with in the blogosphere. It’s impossible to overstate how excellent and fresh his stuff was. Grantland was amazing for many reasons; despite its odd fit with the rest of ESPN, it bringing them Zach Lowe by itself seemed to justify the investment/adventure.

Lowe initially continued that run at ESPN for several years. More recently, in my view, he’d … not faltered, but at least slown down. He was a starting pitcher throwing good stuff through many innings but no longer dazzled with the same breathtaking high heat as before.

Ethan has written much about the oddities of working in ESPN’s basketball coverage in recent years. Lowe seemed above the Woj Game of Thrones nonsense (in part because he was too polite to antagonize him and old school New England enough to be careful not to). But I always wondered if that station’s weirdness, impulsivity, and poor decision making (including dictates for Lowe on TV and in its treatment of his columns) affected him.

Regardless, he was still acknowledgely the best of an important generation and movement. And now he is laid off - not because he is not part of sportswriting’s gambling culture (itself frankly increasingly sick and malignant - like where the opioid manufacturers were in the early 1990’s…) but also not protected by it,

A demonstration, in other words, of Ethan’s insight here. You’re not secure employed as a sportswriter unless your content is useful to gamblers - even if you’re Zach Lowe.

First off, I do think Lowe’s work was of use to some gamblers. I largely agree with what this post is getting at, though: Lowe was an odd fit within an institution that was declining in quality and generally getting more crass.

So what happens now? Obviously there are rumors about Zach joining Bill Simmons at the Ringer, which seems like a seamless fit. If they regularly co-hosted an NBA podcast, it would do numbers.

Others have suggested that Zach go independent and rake in money with a newsletter. He’d certainly be well positioned to do so, but I think that decision hinges on how much Lowe wants to write at this stage. Newsletters tend to demand a lot of written content and sports writers who can make big money off podcasting alone usually trend in that direction.

Will he work for a team? I can’t imagine wanting to, given what I’ve seen of NBA Ops, but you never know. Someone would pay him.

My only bit of advice and, no, I haven’t spoken with Zach, is that he take advantage of the time left on his ESPN contract. In 2017, I didn’t know what would happen if I disappeared for awhile. It was scary to leave the NBA scene. I was burned out from being at ESPN. My career felt precarious. About a year later, I returned refreshed with the Athletic, and wasn’t hurt for having been absent. Zach’s a bigger name than I was, and certainly more essential to the information diet of the NBA world. He can exit, figure out what matters and return when it’s right. He’ll be better for his absence. ESPN will not.