Steve Phillips Sex Scandal Drives Wedge Between Deadspin And ESPN (Update)

After Steve Phillips‘ sex scandal broke earlier this week, one of the leading sports blogs, Deadspin.com (owned by Gawker Media), felt personally slighted by the New York Post story after feeling mislead by ESPN PR the month before. So they began publishing other tips, unverified unconfirmed, about ESPN employee sex scandals.

Now the relationship between the Worldwide Leader in Sports and Deadspin seems severely damaged.

Chris LaPlaca, ESPN SVP of corporate communications, released this statement to Mediaite:

Deadspin’s self-admitted rumor mongering is despicable behavior by any standard and shows callous disregard for its impact on people’s lives. It is not worthy of response and those responsible should be called to account. ESPN is home to thousands of hard working, creative and caring people who are the key to our success. Our company is not perfect but we will continue to do all we can to provide each of our employees with a positive working environment.

And around the rest of the web, other sports blogs spoke out about Deadspin’s decision, saying it hurts the credibility of all sports blogs.

We talked to Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio on yesterday’s Office Hours about how this happened, and how he came to the decision to unleash the power of the tip box. “I think that the relationship that you have with PR people, I know it’s their job to keep these things under wraps as much as possible, but we’ve been pretty fair with ESPN and this was something that I perceived as kind of a slight and threw a little bit of a temper tantrum on the site about it,” he said. “And obviously you saw what transpired on the site, and I’m getting a lot of crap about it, but it happened, and here we are.”

While Daulerio says the tip they originally got was not exactly what the story ended up being, he says “this wasn’t completely off base…It just felt like there was a level of trust that I had with this person that felt a little eroded.”

The decision is likely to impact what Deadspin looks like in the future. For fans of the site, it has worked hard to be recognized as a legitimate sports news outlet by ESPN and others. Now, this will damage that reputation. And while other sports sites question the lasting effect on their credibility, the slippery slope of publishing tips, even those that have a significant portion of truth to it, will turn those who oppose the practices of blogs even further against them. But what Wednesday did was secure Deadspin’s place in the marketplace – as their slogan says, the site is “sports news without access, favor or discretion.” If it edged toward the mainstream recently, Wednesday was a step back into the discretion-free side of the blogosphere. And to huge traffic numbers.

> Update: Daulerio responds to ESPN’s statement, telling Mediaite:

It’s not surprising and, honestly, what else could they possibly say at this point? I’m sure I made a lot of people angry and annoyed over there, but I also made a lot of people quite giddy. And, please, this wasn’t at all about casting moral judgment (who the fuck am I to do that?) — it’s about a flimsy code of conduct policy that gets enforced whenever it makes the company look bad in public. That’s annoyed plenty of ESPN employees.

Here’s the full show yesterday – with Daulerio’s interview coming at the 28-minute mark:

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