Fox Sports Is Having A Little Trouble With That Pivot

Being the person in charge of a media outlet’s assignment desk is not a glamorous gig. You ask permission to use other people’s hard work and hope they don’t tell you to fuck off, which they have every right to do. The Fox Sports desk, after the network pursued a video-first online presence, is one step weirder than that: Instead of merely asking for an element already published—video or audio already aired, say—they want reporters to give up their raw reporting in Fox’s specific preferred format.

This goes beyond mere aggregation, a universal practice which is acceptable with proper credit. The Fox Sports Desk asks print reporters for audio or video, because words are now useless to Fox Sports:

Today’s example was the Fox Sports Desk asking Bleacher Report’s Matt Hayes, who published a written interview with UCLA QB Josh Rosen, if the network could get a hold of any audio he used.

Hayes responded by defending written articles. The Fox Sports Desk did not pick up on his joke:

Thus concludes my article written off of someone else’s tweets. The future of media is cool.

H/t to @fitzy955