ESPN's been as big a part of Pittsburgh sporting culture as it has across America, and this for the better part of three decades.
But apparently not for a whole lot longer.
100-plus employees were laid off this past April and now, courtesy of the excellent reporting Thursday by Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch, we know that 100-plus more will be gone after Thanksgiving. What's more, those of us who regularly communicate with people at ESPN know that it won't stop there. Not within this new generation of cable cord-cutting and TV via Internet. The financial losses in recent months have been massive and, by all accounts, even this slashing of nearly 10 percent of the staff amounts to little more than a symbolic tourniquet.
Some will rejoice in this, of course. That's how things roll when someone or some entity climbs to the top and, yeah, maybe mutates into something we no longer recognize. And ESPN, like most mammoth companies, has made its share of mistakes.
My own perspective on some of those, in no real order:
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