ESPN’s Plan to Dominate the Post-TV World

Rather than force a unified ESPN style onto every social-media platform, the team takes care to learn the local language of every territory of the Internet—experimenting with live feeds on its homepage, studying which stories fly furthest on Facebook, and practicing the goofball patois of Snapchat… ESPN is impressively agnostic about where to put it best stuff, sharing ad-free video clips on Snapchat; tweeting its long feature pieces days before the magazine slips into mail boxes; and making an infinity of videos, podcasts, articles, and other forms of content free on its website and in other forms. And all this from the network that can charge cable operators and satellite TV companies the highest rate in the industry, thanks to its exclusive offerings. ESPN has never been more expensive to “buy” as a television station, nor more abundantly cheap to consume online.

.. In a way, ESPN is confronting the slow unbundling of television by unbundling itself—treating its own site, plus Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and phone alerts, as separate channels, each with their own appropriate programming and tone.

Jesse Owens: Hitler didn’t snub me — It was FDR who snubbed me

“When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.”
“Hitler didn’t snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

What Mountain Climbing Can Teach You About Business

“Most people go around with a jacket designed for weather that’s going to happen 5 percent of the time. The other 95 percent of the time it’s overdesigned.” In other words, wouldn’t we rather be really comfortable 95 percent of the time and figure a way to get by during the other 5 percent?

.. I was climbing with Brad Petersen, who now runs Utah’s Office of Outdoor Recreation. We had a particular route in mind. But a storm rolled in, and we were forced to change our plans. For a moment, I was frustrated that we had been derailed, and it looked like we weren’t going to make it to the summit. I found myself wondering, “What was the point if we couldn’t finish the climb?”

Then I reminded myself, “Wait a second. We’re having an amazing day on the mountain. The rainstorm is beautiful, and I’m with one of my best friends. What do I have to be mad about?” We adjusted. We found a little shelter and enjoyed the moment. A little later, the storm passed and we moved up the mountain to see what it would give us.