Friday was not the best of nights for ESPN on the technical side. The end of the CFL game on ESPN2 was cut off by technical difficulties, as was the start of the next CFL game on ESPN3, while ESPNews slid Brian Windhorst across and off the screen while muting Ramona Shelburne. Perhaps most disastrously, after a ton of hype around his signing, ESPN PR tweeted a welcome to new NBA journalist Adrian Wojnarowski that was quickly remedied ineffective when he changed his account name to include ESPN and someone jumped on the old one:
https://twitter.com/markjburns88/status/881001276443684864
Epic Twitter Fail. After all the buildup, @ESPNPR tweets a welcome to @wojespn and tags a fake Woj account! (then deletes it) pic.twitter.com/Rsu5aK3drC
— Geoff Grammer (@GeoffGrammer) July 1, 2017
They did quickly delete it and tweet his new @WojESPN handle:
New home, new handle, same great reporting. Welcome to ESPN, @wojespn. Now on with @notthefakeSVP
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) July 1, 2017
Still, “What’s your handle going to be when you join us?” feels like an important question to ask. And there was obviously a lot of preparation for Woj’s first ESPN tweets and first appearances; he didn’t tweet all day Friday, saving things up until he officially joined ESPN. At least this didn’t stop Woj from dropping some bombs once his contract officially kicked in at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Saturday:
Stephen Curry has agreed to a 5-year, $201M deal with Golden State, agent Jeff Austin of Octagon tells ESPN. No… https://t.co/v8sOh909y7
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 1, 2017
And the main @ESPN account got their crediting right:
Breaking: Steph Curry has agreed to a 5-year, $201M supermax deal with the Warriors, per @wojespn. pic.twitter.com/R480fwBz3C
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 1, 2017
But yeah, don’t go follow @WojVerticalNBA. It looks like it may be setting up to be a fake one, and Fake Woj accounts are a plague (they’ve even fooled ESPN at times). @WojESPN is who you need now.
[Mark Burns on Twitter]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.