ESPN, AOL Veteran to Edit Online Sports Network
Neal Scarbrough, who was laid off as general manager and editor of AOL Sports just last month, has been named senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Sportnet, which calls itself “the internet’s most comprehensive sports network.”
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An announcement was made Nov. 12, and Scarbrough, who has been one of the highest ranking African Americans in the online news world, discussed the appointment on Tuesday with Michael Tillery on the Web site The Starting Five.
“I’ve done corporate at two different places,” said Scarbrough, who, before AOL, had been ESPN’s vice president and news editor and spent time as the editor-in-chief of ESPN.com.
“Now I want to do a startup and shape some creativity and vision. To be able to go somewhere where in a couple of cases there aren’t any walls. We have certain limits to what we can do in the next year or so, but there aren’t any walls to what we can do concerning creativity, new ideas and different ways to package the access. It’s literally why they are bringing me in—to help package media and give each site a voice and programming. There are already people that do a great job. I just want to make sure every day it adds up to something.”
He said, “If you go to Sportnet.com it’s kind of an inactive corporate site. The company has all types of resources dedicated to their athlete and sports sites. Everything is in place—the talent, the technology, the design and vision of strategy to build. That was part of the attraction.
“My plan really is to organize our content to reach the 18-34 or younger audience. To take some of the sovereignty, create some real appointment viewing, content and community around these niche enthusiasts in sports. They are all about the next thing coming. We also manage over 400 athletes (SFX ). We sort of have a perfect storm of access, athletes and league agreements and things. My job is to come in and organize the content platform. We want to create unique conversations around sports — numerous sites in the next three months. Everything from actual sports support to maybe even some blog sites of under served topics geared to minority audiences.
“We really are just throwing down what direction we can take, what kind of engine of design in sports writing, relationships and make hay in areas wide open — Olympic sports, action sports, soccer, tennis and maybe mixed martial arts.”
Scarbrough, 45, was among the 2,000 employees laid off by AOL in October. He told Journal-isms then that he did not know what he would to do next, but “at the end of the day, I want to stay in the sports area. I’m not sure I want to stop chasing the dream of creating an African American news and sports site.”
