When Michael Wilbon used to work for the Washington Post in the 1990s, he started appearing on ESPN for a Sunday program called The Sports Reporters. During that time, according to host Dan Le Batard, The New York Times had strict rules for its sports writers.
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“They made sure that their sports writers ended up being exclusive and wouldn’t go over to ESPN because they feared the idea,” Le Batard said on the LeBatard Show.
As Le Batard noted, the New York Times was more “precious” and “saw the danger” that no one else did. However, as he questioned Wilbon about that strict historical stance, the veteran ESPN commentator called out the publication for the massive change they made in 2023.
“They bailed. They were the first to bail. F— the New York Times. I work for a better section anyway. You think I wouldn’t take a section with Tom Boswell and Dave Kindred and Tony Kornheiser, Sally Jenkins and David Remnick and David Aldridge and Jay and Dante, and I’m skipping a whole generation of people,” Wilbon said on the LeBatard Show.
“Barry Lorge, the greatest tennis writer of all time. All those, half of those people went to television. F— the New York Times, which bailed on our profession. It bailed. It took the sports section away. Gutless m———–.”
The New York Times announced in 2023 that it would stop producing a standalone sports section, with much of its sports journalism handled through The Athletic, which it acquired in 2022. The move represented a big shift in how the publication approached sports coverage.
For Wilbon, the decision was a sign of an industry that had increasingly moved away from the traditional newspaper sports desk. His own career was built at The Washington Post, where he spent more than three decades before joining ESPN full-time in 2010.
“This is the first column I ever dreaded writing, the only time I can recall experiencing that thing known as writer’s block. It’s my last column for The Washington Post, 20-some years after my first one and 311/2 years after I walked in the door as a summer intern. It’s not Shirley Povich’s 75 years, but I hung around long enough to think it might last forever,” Wilbon wrote in his last column for The Washington Post.
And his recent comments come amid continuing trouble in sports media. In February 2026, The Washington Post dismantled its sports department as part of widespread layoffs, leading Wilbon to speak publicly about the loss of an organization that had defined much of his professional life.
Wilbon concluded his rant with an unmistakable expression of frustration, describing the New York Times as “gutless” for abandoning its traditional sports section.
The loss is personal as well as professional for Wilbon. The writers he celebrated helped establish a standard of sports journalism that he believes deserves recognition rather than abandonment.