Adam Schefter knows why Woj quit

Adrian Wojnarowski changed sports and media, but sports media is changing again

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Adrian Wojnarowski stunned the sports world Wednesday with a mid-morning post on X announcing the end of his journalism career. 

One final Woj bomb offered lasting evidence of his power. NBA Twitter’s remaining netizens were instantly alerted, having long ago signed up for notifications each time he tweeted. The news rocketed around Sportico’s Slack and my group texts with non-journalists at equal speed. Woj’s post hit 20 million views in less than 24 hours.

As further details—Woj is taking a job with his alma mater’s basketball team—mixed with memes, jokes, and heartfelt reactions, we all got to experience one more unpredictable, uproarious, utterly addicting hour in the echo chamber Woj built.

Amid the clamor, many stopped to wonder exactly why a 55-year-old at the top of his game would choose to surrender his throne. But not fellow newsbreaker Adam Schefter. Schefter understood.

“He wanted his life back,” Schefter said on NBA Today. “You can't kind of do the job, you have to live the job.”

Every beat reporter knows the anxiety of stepping away from their computer—or, heaven forbid, their phone—for one moment, wary that earth-shattering news is just waiting to catch them absent. I certainly do, even if comparing my work to Woj’s is like lining a hair dryer up next to a hurricane. So I think journalists generally were quick to accept Woj’s decision, even if it likely means leaving millions of dollars on the table.

“Time isn’t in endless supply and I want to spend mine in ways that are more personally meaningful,” he wrote on Wednesday.

It’s worth remembering that Woj came up in a pre-Twitter era, working at New Jersey’s Bergen Record and Yahoo Sports before landing at ESPN. It was actually the wife of his Yahoo editor who told him in 2009 that he ought to use the nascent microblogging service to share draftday information before it was announced on TV. Social media, sports, news—none of it would be the same. 

Over the ensuing 15 years, Wojnarowski broke countless mega stories. He was the messenger to millions of people that LeBron James was becoming a Laker, yes. But he also told fans that the NBA season was being suspended in 2020, that Clippers owner Donald Sterling would be banned for life, and that Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash. You simply can’t recount the story of professional basketball in the 21st century without mentioning the Woj bombs.

Yet there was a clear dark side to the power newsbreakers came to wield. And I always find it striking how honest they are about that.

Woj has talked about avoiding daytime flights—even taking crack-of-dawn, multileg journeys instead—out of fear of missing a scoop from 30,000 feet. Shams Charania regularly eschews dates to stay available for unexpected source calls. Schefter frequently cops to using his phone at the urinal and in the shower. 

Last July, ESPN MLB reporter Jeff Passan apologized to his online following for not posting for a while. In the interim, he explained, a tree limb had fallen on him, fracturing a vertebra. But don’t worry, he wrote soon after. “My back may be shot, but my phone still works.”

The scoop game has only gotten more competitive and all-consuming in recent years. And yet, in a new era of the internet, the insider may no longer hold the center of the sports universe. Elon Musk’s X is decreasingly the go-to source for news. Growing platforms like TikTok and YouTube prioritize virality over speed. And as ESPN seeks a new generation of fans, it has put an emphasis on cornering the market for personalities as much as reporters.

Insiders are paid millions largely as a branding exercise; with each scoop, they validate ESPN or any other organization as the go-to, plugged-in home for sports fans. But I haven’t seen the evidence that the next generation cares as much about who got each nugget first. Do you remember who broke the Tyreek Hill arrest story? Or the Paul George to Philadelphia news?

All that said, people are still ready to pry the leaks Woj no longer extracts. Charania. Chris Haynes. Jake Fischer. Reporters are wired to chase, chase, chase, until they simply can’t go any further. 

On that note, I’ve got a call to take.

tl;dr: 👦🤳💣🤩💰😓🏖️👦

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Now turning it over to Eben for his Pick Six, including a Nancy Pelosi impersonator, the NFL insurance market, and more…

Story of the Week 🏈: We published our Highest Paid NFL Players this week, and for the first time ever, there’s an active NFL player making more than $100 million per year in salary and endorsements (any guesses?). This list is always interesting to me because it highlights just how few NFL players actually have meaningful endorsements. LeBron James, who tops the NBA list, makes $80 million in off-field pay. That’s more than the nine highest paid NFL players, combined.

Story of the Week (Non-Sportico Division) 🏈: Most stories about salary cap machinations typically make my eyes glaze over—it’s a complex system that few understand and everyone is trying to game—but I loved Kalyn Kahler’s ESPN piece about how NFL teams use insurance as a way to “create cap space from scratch.” As an added bonus, she tells your if your favorite QB is insured.