“The chance to work on that investigative enterprise unit is a dream come true,” said Wetzel. “It has such a great staff, editors, and resources, and they’re committed to doing the kinds of stories I like doing.”
Wetzel, a Norwell native and University of Massachusetts graduate, is joining ESPN as a senior writer as part of its investigative and enterprise journalism unit.
Dan Wetzel, who helped build up the Yahoo! Sports brand while becoming one of the most decorated sportswriters of his generation, is leaving the company for ESPN.
ESPN has also hired producer Juanita Ceballos, an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, to its investigative team.
Wetzel, who had been a national columnist with Yahoo! Sports since 2003, has won more than a dozen Associated Press Sports Editors awards. His columns and features have regularly appeared in the anthology “The Year’s Best Sports Writing.”
He is also a New York Times bestselling author and has screenwriting and production credits, including the Netflix miniseries “Killer Inside: The Life of Aaron Hernandez.”
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“ESPN has so many resources, and outlets, and ways to tell a story,” said Wetzel, who had worked for ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro previously at Yahoo! Sports. “Their plan for digital content and the company going forward is really exciting, and I’m aligned with what they’re doing and how they’re navigating the future. Media is always changing, and I just have a lot of faith in those guys.”
Wetzel will focus on investigative reporting, news analysis, feature storytelling, and will work in multiple platforms, including the podcast and television/streaming spaces. His first day is March 17.
He said information will be coming soon about the future of the popular “College Football Enquirer” podcast he hosts along with Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellinger and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde.
Wetzel was the first sportswriter hired at Yahoo! Sports back in 2003, and was critical in building the site’s credibility and traffic.
“We were basically a fantasy site and a search engine, and so there was a lot of planning and building of content strategy and branding and a lot of things I didn’t even necessarily know I was doing but we were,” he said. “Filling out staff, developing a work culture, all of those things.
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“A lot of people there are like family, so it really took an incredible opportunity at the right time for me to leave.”
Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeChadFinn.
Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports’ first sportswriter, leaving site for ESPN
