Vince Doria

Vince Doria has no Wikipedia article, which is odd for a man who ran news at the largest sports broadcaster in the country for most of two decades. What exists instead is ESPN's own account of his career, published when he retired, and the mentions he picks up in other people's stories. This page uses those, and does not fill the gaps with guesswork.

The outline is clear enough. He grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and graduated from Ohio State. His newspaper years took him through sports editor jobs at the Ashtabula Star-Beacon, the Columbus Citizen-Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer before he arrived at The Boston Globe in 1975, where he rose from assistant sports editor to sports editor and then to assistant managing editor for sports and photography.

In 1989 Doria left the Globe to be executive editor of The National, the daily sports newspaper Frank Deford edited with money from the Mexican broadcaster Emilio Azcarraga. The paper published from January 31, 1990, to June 13, 1991, and its staff list reads like a later A.P.S.E. banquet: Mike Lupica, Chris Mortensen, Norman Chad, Leigh Montville among them. It failed on distribution, not on journalism, and the people who ran it were hired quickly elsewhere.

Doria went to ESPN in 1992. He helped launch the ESPYs in 1993, was managing editor of ESPN2's news programming including SportsNight that same year, and spent two years as executive producer of ESPN Classic. The job he is known for came in two separate stints as head of newsgathering, ending as senior vice president and director of news.

A print sports editor, in charge of what a television network called news.

Under Doria ESPN built the daily Outside the Lines, launched and expanded ESPNEWS, created an enterprise unit for long investigations and reorganized newsgathering so that television, radio and the website drew on the same reporting. The network's coverage of the Bernie Fine allegations at Syracuse in 2011 and the Michael Sam interview in 2014 ran through his desk. Colleagues who worked under him, Jeremy Schaap among them, have described the experience as the best part of long ESPN careers.

The Associated Press Sports Editors gave him the Red Smith Award in 2009, listing his affiliation as ESPN. Only Dick Schaap in 2002 had carried the network's name on the list before him, and Schaap was honored as a writer and broadcaster; Doria is the first recipient whose case rested on running a broadcaster's news operation, with qualifications that were entirely those of a newspaperman. He retired from ESPN on February 28, 2015. Viewers may also know him, without knowing his name, from eight of the network's This Is SportsCenter commercials.