NFL Network not bringing back Jim Trotter

NFL

By Ryan Glasspiegel

March 27, 2023 | 3:22pm

NFL Media is reshaping its roster.

Veteran football reporter Jim Trotter, who has had awkward interactions with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at the last two Super Bowl press conferences, announced Monday that his time at NFL Network is coming to an end.

“Some personal news: This will be my final week with the NFL Media Group,” Trotter tweeted Monday morning.

“I was informed over the weekend that my contract is not being renewed. I thank NFL Network and NFL.com for the lessons learned and affirmed over the last five years.”

The NFL offseason is the time of year where NFL Media traditionally makes decisions on whether to renew talent contracts and also who to hire from other organizations.

As The Post previously reported, there are looming cost cuts coming at NFL Media, the league’s media arm that includes NFL Network, NFL Films and NFL.com.

“Given this period of broader economic uncertainty, it’s fair to say the NFL’s media group is taking an extra step or two to make sure all costs and expenditures make sense,” a source familiar with the matter said.

Trotter joined NFL Media in 2017.

Prior to that, he covered the NFL for Sports Illustrated and ESPN.

At Goodell’s media availability during Super Bowl week in February, Trotter asked the commissioner a pointed question about newsroom diversity.

“You and other league officials have said that the league’s commitment to diversity, equity inclusion extends beyond the sidelines and front offices and is applied to all aspects of the company,” Trotter said.

“I’ve worked at NFL Media for five years, during those five years we have never had a black person in senior management in our newsroom. That’s a problem because we cover a league, that according to league data, the player population is 60-70 percent black, which means that there’s no one who looks like these players at the table when decisions are being made about how they are covered. More concerning is that for a year-plus now we have not had a fulltime black employee on the news desk, which again is a problem because we cover a league whose player population is 60-70 percent black.

“I asked you about these things last year and your answer was that the league had fallen short and you were going to review all of your policies and practices to try and improve this and yet a year later nothing has changed. James Baldwin once said that I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do. And so what I would ask you, as an employee, is when, in the newsroom, will we have a black person in senior management and when will we have a fulltime black employee on the newsdesk?”

Goodell answered that the league is continuing to work on what Trotter asked about.

“Jim, I am not in charge of the newsroom,” Goodell said.

“As you point out, it’s the same question you asked last year. We did go back and we have reviewed everything we’ve been doing across the league and we are looking at everything from vendors that we’re working with to partners that we’re working with to ownership where we’ve seen significant changes in diversity just this year.

“I do not know specifically about our media business, and I will check in again with our people, but I’m comfortable that we made significant progress across the league. I can’t answer this specific question [and] some of the data you may have raised there may be accurate, may be not. Last year I was told some of it wasn’t. We’ll get to you on that. We want to make progress across the board and that includes in the media room.”

In response to Monday’s news about Trotter leaving the organization, an NFL Media official told The Post that 58 percent of full-time employees hired in 2022 were people of color, and that the three most recent NFL Media senior hires are people of color.

Angela Ellis (VP of Entertainment and Initiatives) and Tony Cole (VP of Media Operations) are black and Sandy Nunez (VP of Talent Management) is Hispanic.

NFL Media also recently poached up-and-coming reporter Sherree Burress, who is black, from CBS Sports.