The following message was relayed to the staff recently from ESPN president George Bodenheimer:

“As you all know we face a very challenging year. As we navigate through it, we will more than ever need to carefully manage our expenses if we are to realize continued growth. In that vein, and after considerable thought, we have decided to cancel all company-supported holiday events this year.

We recognize this will be a disappointment for many. However, taken in the larger context of our overall commitment to providing the resources needed to support our work force and to take advantage of growth opportunities, this is an appropriate step in today’s economic climate. We appreciate your understanding.”

This isn’t a total surprise – if the troubling economy has forced Conde Nast to cancel their Christmas Party, and everyone else is, too, it makes little sense to put on a glitzy affair in Bristol.

We’ve been collecting some strange and conflicting intel regarding how the economy will further impact ESPN as the calendar turns to 2009.

For instance, we’ve heard that ESPN is strongly considering expanding their NFL blog presence from divisions next year to individual teams. It’s a likely progression, right? It will certainly create the potential for less conflicts. If the plan is to have individual blogs/websites for the major college football teams next season, why not give the same treatment to the NFL?

Essentially, that could create a beat-writer-like intensity to each team. And based on the little we’ve seen from the ESPN NFL blogs so far, it seems like the plan is simple – if you’re a fan of the Jaguars, bookmark their page, and visit a few times each day, because ESPN will continuously be aggregating any link on the web that’s talking about Jacksonville. If this doesn’t have the feel of Alexander the Great steamrolling any and everyone, it certainly might in five years.

At the same time, we’ve heard that ESPN is contemplating a hiring freeze in 2009, which would definitely not be good news for all the unemployed journalists. Most it is probably just scuttlebutt floating in the halls of Bristol, but everyone is fairly certain that the WWL will be scaling back (read: cost cutting) in 2009.

Photo from here.