Monday, October 18, 2004
Media Bias?
According to William LaRue, the "S" in ESPN might as well be for Syracuse.Pick almost any office or studio at ESPN's sprawling headquarters in Bristol, Conn., and you will find at least one person who got a college degree from SU's School of Public Communications.
The number of ESPN producers, program directors, production assistants and publicists who are SU graduates has blossomed with the growth of the network. The list of on-air journalists with SU degrees who have worked for ESPN includes Mike Tirico, Dave Ryan, Beth Mowins, Vera Jones, Sean McDonough and Dave Pasch.
While no one at ESPN could offer a precise count of the number of SU alums among its 3,000 employees, executives agreed there are dozens and dozens at its various TV channels, as well as ESPN Radio Network, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine...
Few have worked at ESPN headquarters longer than Steve Vecchione, 46, a 1979 Newhouse graduate who has been at the sports channel since four months after it went on the air in September 1979.
Vecchione says SU's role in funneling graduates to the network has been an inside joke at ESPN almost since the time he arrived there. "It almost seems like there's the Syracuse grads and the non-Syracuse grads, because there are a lot of us."
