With relaunched E:60, ESPN aims to prove its journalism isn't dead

Bob Ley knew what the question would be before it came, and not just because of his vast experience at ESPN.

It's about something that seemingly everyone has raised with him and so many other people at the network. Indeed, it's been a conversation across the entire sports media industry. And this weekend, it will take on even more meaning.

ESPN is elevating its E:60 investigative reporting show to a marquee time slot, Sunday at 9 a.m. on the flagship channel. Previously, the show has aired at a range of times during the week. The move comes on the heels of the network's laying off more than 100 employees, many of whom were committed to producing top-quality journalism for the network.

So it had to be asked: Is E:60's promotion a statement that journalism isn't dead at ESPN?

Ley started by noting that the schedule for E:60's move was set months before the layoffs were confirmed.

"This is a coincidence of timing," he said. "But what it does illustrate, certainly, is while we've gone through a very difficult couple of weeks – it hit all of us viscerally – 9 o'clock Sunday morning for an hour is Rodeo Drive real estate."

Ley and fellow ESPN veteran Jeremy Schaap will be E:60's lead presenters. They'll work out of a studio that is being built for the show. You'll see a wide range of contributing reporters. To name just a few: Tom Rinaldi, Inquirer alum Kate Fagan, Lisa Salters, Wright Thompson, Mina Kimes, Chris Connolly, and Shelley Smith.

Expect to see a wide range of subjects covered on the show, from athletes' backstories to global sports controversies. This weekend's debut show will include Schaap interviewing Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott about his close relationship with his late mother, and Steve Fainaru reporting on how the war in Syria has dramatically affected the nation's soccer team.

Here's a preview of the Syria soccer story:

"I couldn't have dreamed that we'd be doing this kind of high-end work, in terms of the production values and the reporting, the resources that are being thrown behind it – I couldn't have dreamed of that when I came to the company a long time ago," Schaap said.

The Syria piece took seven months for Fainaru and producer Greg Amante to assemble. It's accompanied by a long feature that will run in ESPN's print magazine – Ley quipped that the first draft of the written piece was 28 pages. And as with any work of global investigative journalism, it did not come cheap.

"They were in Sweden. They were in Germany. They were in Malaysia. They were in Kuwait. They were in Turkey on the Syrian border," Schaap said. "The level of reporting, getting these guys to talk about very sensitive matters that could endanger them and their families, is remarkable. And I think it's representative of a lot of the work we do on the show, where it is a sports story – there's a strong hook there, it's not tangential in any way – but it's a larger issue, obviously. And the hope always that is that by taking our audience to these places, by showing them the horrors of the Syrian Civil War, that we're opening up their eyes, and perhaps illuminating for them issues that they're not as aware of."

ESPN will always have critics of the layoffs, and understandably so. But there is still a commitment to spending significant money on reporting, even if the number of people doing the reporting isn't as big as it was.

"This particular project has substantial backing at the highest levels of the company," Ley said. "That's a statement unto itself. If folks want to assign additional importance to it in the here and now, they are welcome to. I just don't like to engage in the narrative that something is in danger because of business decisions the company had to make a fortnight ago. I don't buy that."

It should come as no surprise that soccer features prominently in E:60's relaunch. Reporting on the sport was a foundation of the previous versions of E:60, as well as Ley's work on Outside the Lines.

And as fans of the world's game know well, Ley and Schaap have held roles in ESPN's presentation of soccer for decades. Ley called play-by-play at the 1994 and 1998 World Cups, then hosted studio coverage in 2010, 2011 and 2014. Schaap has traveled to every World Cup since '98, serving as the U.S. national-team sideline reporter in France, South Africa and Brazil.

In between tournaments, they've chronicled soccer's growth in America, and delivered award-winning reporting on scandals at FIFA, the sport's global governing body.

Many other contributors to E:60 also have ties to soccer. Sam Borden covered the explosion of the FIFA scandal from its front lines in Switzerland for the New York Times before joining ESPN last year. Bob Woodruff reported on the 2014 World Cup for ESPN and ABC. Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach were star players for the U.S. women's national team.

Ley might not get another chance to tear up a FIFA Congress agenda on live TV, and ESPN won't be able to get rights to a FIFA tournament until 2027 at the earliest. But the passion Ley and Schaap have for the world's game is as strong as ever, and E:60 will reflect that.

"There's no question," Schaap said. He noted that in a few weeks, the show will air a feature on the Chapecoense plane crash tragedy that killed almost an entire Brazilian soccer team as it traveled to the championship of a South American club tournament.

Ley couldn't resist tossing a barb FIFA's way as he previewed the Syria report.

"It points out the political symbolism and utilization of this team, both domestically and in the region, as a symbol of Syrian unity – if such a thing can even be conceived of after what we've seen for the last several years," he said. "The irony is the FIFA Congress is meeting this week [and] none of this is on the agenda. There's a long history with FIFA of suspending FAs [national soccer federations] around the world for political interference, but as you'll see in the piece Sunday, there's been one activist. He's now exiled, living in Sweden. Three times, and the third and final time you will see him in FIFA speaking to these people, [he] takes his case to FIFA, and basically to no avail."

Overall, Ley and Schaap have high expectations for the journalism that E:60 will deliver. It's clear they want viewers to feel the same way.

"I think you're going to see a show that's not predictable, that will have pieces of some great length and scope and breadth, of human interest, of global matters, of hard news reporting, of accountability," Ley said. "Each show can be different – be they smaller items of human interest that will pique your curiosity, moments of commentary, interviews, and certainly the signature longform pieces."

Schaap said he hopes it will be "a true magazine show experience for the audience," and echoed Ley's belief that diversity will be a hallmark.

"You want to maintain quality, but everything shouldn't feel the same," Schaap said. "Everything shouldn't sound the same. The correspondents bring their unique styles to the pieces they report. The producers have their own styles, of course, visually in terms of storytelling. That, to me, is what it's all about. The best work that our units can do, and variety."

And if, along the way, there's a chance to make a statement that ESPN still has plenty of journalistic muscle, Schaap won't turn down the opportunity.

"Obviously, for us to lose, as colleagues, people who've been friends for decades is painful. It stinks," Schaap said. "I think the commitment to this show – and to the relaunch of OTL the following day – demonstrate ESPN's seriousness, however, about news, and sports news, and storytelling. … I know ESPN believes that this is important."