ESPN has recently faced public scrutiny beyond its control, an experience that has humbled the cable giant. Late last month the company cut ties with 100 employees, many of them front-facing television talent. The layoffs sparked a deluge of media coverage examining ESPN’s decline and future. The consensus opinion blamed the network’s woes on overly expensive live-sports contracts and subscriber losses attributed to cable “cord-cutting.”

That’s accurate but incomplete. What has truly impeded ESPN from overcoming its financial mistakes and inability to adapt to technological advances? The decadelong culture war ESPN lost to Deadspin, a snarky, politically progressive sports blog launched by Gawker’s Nick Denton in 2005.

While the mainstream media has failed to document the extent of Deadspin’s rout of ESPN, I haven’t. I worked at ESPN twice, BD and AD. Before Deadspin (2001-06) and After Deadspin (2013-15).

The Mark Shapiro era defined my initial stint at the network. Mr. Shapiro—a youthful, abrasive, risk-taking senior vice president in charge of programming and production—conceived much of the programming that defines the network to this day. He invented “Pardon the Interruption” and “Around the Horn.” He also paired Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, televised “Mike and Mike” and “The World Series of Poker,” hired Colin Cowherd, and landed ESPN’s NBA package.

“Mark built a culture at ESPN,” said former ESPN executive Jim Cohen in an interview. “It’s always easy to do the predictable. If the predictable doesn’t work, no one is going to question you, because it’s what you were supposed to do. A lot of people in that newsroom laughed out loud when we started ‘PTI.’ They said it had no chance at succeeding.”