If there was any doubt how important the Democrat Party is to many figures in the sports media landscape, the 2024 presidential election should officially end it. Almost as soon as it was clear that President-Elect Donald Trump would win, hordes of sports media personalities left Elon Musk’s X social media platform for bluer pastures.

Bluesky, a competitor started by former Twitter head Jack Dorsey, has become the place for the political left to run and hide from free and open discussion on X. So much so that Dorsey earlier in 2024 left the board and urged users to remain on X. Sounds exactly like the place for anti-free speech sports media.

Awful Announcing covered the increasing numbers of left wing sports personalities fleeing any dissenting views to remain safely ensconced in their political echo chamber.

“The current owner of Twitter’s politics aside, his role in the recent election aside, the ways he has changed the platform aside, I think Twitter peaked probably 5-10 years ago, period,” Howard Beck from The Ringer said on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast, per Awful Announcing.

Beck is a longtime user on Bluesky, which welcomed such luminaries as Mina Kimes, Sarah Spain, Pablo Torre, Rachel Nichols, and Danny Kelly. Suddenly. Just after the 2024 election. What a surprise!

ESPN’s Mina Kimes is one of many sports media personalities retreating into a left wing social media bubble. (Photo by Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images for AWXII)

Sports Media Personalities Show Their True Colors

Kimes posted on Bluesky celebrating the fact that she receives less criticism for being untalented: “Looking at the replies on an app and not seeing porn bots or people calling me DEI,” she said on Tuesday.

Awful Announcing, predictably, celebrated it. “It’s easy to take the plunge when the platform that once served as a journalist’s ideal tool has become actively antagonistic toward them,” the article says.

“The current owner of Twitter has absolute contempt for journalism and for journalists,” Beck said, per the story. “Because of that, the site has been re-engineered in a way that is to our detriment or certainly is not to our benefit in the way that a previous version of Twitter once was.”

Meg Linehan from The Athletic told Awful Announcing that the election was a “last-straw” for her to leave.

“Honestly, I should have done it earlier, but the election was a last-straw sort of situation,” she said. “It had stopped being a major traffic driver anyway, but I was in a cycle of dreading opening the app or looking at my notifications even before last week. Mostly I think I’ll be on Instagram, which obviously has a different feel and purpose, but Bluesky has surprised me this week. I wish Threads were better but the algorithm feels pretty antithetical to real-time sports discussion or coverage.”

A “scholar” on sports media, Dr. Brian Moritz, from St. Bonaventure University said that the “philosophical” changes eroded his audience.

“…given the technical and philosophical changes that have happened there over the past year or two, even that little audience had basically vanished.”

This is exactly what you’d expect from sports media personalities. They enjoyed Twitter when only their political team was allowed to speak freely. They enjoyed being told how wonderful they were by their ideological allies. The first sign of push back or criticism and they bolt, desperate to find another echo chamber free from dissenting views.

The vast majority of sports-related conversation, all conversation, still happens on X. But because they dislike Elon Musk, dislike a more open discussion, and view politics as the most important thing in their life, they’re leaving for Bluesky. It’s embarrassing, illustrative, and cowardly. Sounds exactly like most modern sports media.

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