Dan Wetzel, one of America’s most widely read and decorated sports writers of the past two decades, has joined ESPN as a senior writer, strengthening ESPN’s Investigative and Enterprise Journalism Unit. Wetzel, who has covered sports events around the world, comes to ESPN from Yahoo Sports, where he had been a national columnist since 2003.
At ESPN, Wetzel will focus on investigative reporting, news analysis, feature storytelling and will work in multiple platforms, including the podcast and television/streaming spaces. He begins work on March 17.
Joining Wetzel as a recent addition to the unit is producer Juanita Ceballos, whose work has earned Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards alongside being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Ceballos’ work has appeared on FRONTLINE, VICE News, HBO, Showtime, Telemundo, Al Jazeera, Univision, NBC News, TIME and The New York Times.
“We are thrilled with these two impressive additions,” said Chris Buckle, the ESPN vice president who oversees the unit. “With the recent re-signings of senior writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Michael Fletcher, ESPN is further cemented as the place to find best-in-class investigative and enterprise journalism.”
The unit produces various types of journalism – news breaks, magazine-style investigative and feature stories, documentaries, and podcasts, among others — for all ESPN brands and platforms.
Wetzel, also a New York Times bestselling author, has been honored more than a dozen times by the Associated Press Sports Editors, and his work has regularly appeared in the annual The Year’s Best Sports Writing publication. He has covered all major professional sports as well as college sports, the Olympics and the World Cup and has been part of numerous investigative stories on pro and college sports.
As a screenwriter, Wetzel co-wrote Life of a King, a 2014 movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Dennis Haysbert. He is the author of more than two dozen sports-related books, including Glory Road with NCAA basketball coach Don Haskins, which became a Disney movie, and the Epic Athletes series of biographies for children.
A member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, Wetzel is a Massachusetts native and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, where he majored in political science and was editor of the campus newspaper.
Fainaru-Wada, a best-selling author and Polk, Peabody, and Emmy award winner among other accolades, joined ESPN in November of 2007 as an investigative reporter. Last month, ESPN published his piece HOF voters confront tough question: Should a Chiefs great who committed murder-suicide get in?
Fletcher came to the unit in early 2020 from ESPN’s Andscape and has focused on politics, criminal justice and social issues. Prior to joining ESPN in January of 2016, he spent 21 years at The Washington Post, where his beats included the national economy, the White House and race relations. He is the co-author of an award-winning 2007 biography on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Among Fletcher’s work in 2024 was “Group blocks Ty Cobb’s relative for defending Negro Leagues decision.”
-30-
Media contact: andy.hall@espn.com
(Wetzel photo credit: Melissa Tremblay Platinum Imagery / ESPN)
-
-
-
-
-
