D8 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020
I know I can make a difference.
“I don’t want the voice to be
taken away from women at all,”
she continues. “I’m going to fight
for it. I’m going to fight for the
women who had a bad experi-
ence... .”
She pauses for a moment.
“You know, this is supposed to
be fun,” she says. “We work in
sports. To have to carry the bur-
den of what someone did to you is
unacceptable.”‘The best person possible’
There is a perception that Don-
aldson knows people must have.
It’s a belief that the Washington
Football Team, reeling from the
sexual harassment allegations
and desperate to replace Michael
two weeks before players report-
ed for training camp, reached for
the first woman available; a pub-
lic relations stunt to quell the
blow of bad press.
Everyone around the team told
her this is not the case.
“We had an opening and want-
ed to hire the best person possi-
ble,” Bateman says. “The fact she
is a woman was not a driver.”
Donaldson’s job is immense
enough. Stephenson sees a radio
booth where she will be a host
alongside the play-by-play an-
nouncer and analyst that Donald-
son will hire. He imagines her
pulling things from culture and
social media on a broadcast that
will be “interactive” and he hopes
will bring in new audiences. She
must get those hires right while at
the same time making the impact
she wants in the front office.
“These are important, impor-
tant goals she has stated that she
wants to achieve,” says Amy
Tr ask, the CBS analyst who was
the first woman to run an NFL
team as CEO of the Los Angeles
and Oakland Raiders.
The key, says Tr ask — who
doesn’t know Donaldson — is
whether the team gives Donald-
son the means to achieve those
goals. “It’s one thing [for an orga-
nization] to state those changes.”
It may be a while before the
extent of those changes are
known; in the wake of The Post
report, the team commissioned
an independent review into its
workplace culture from D.C. at-
torney Beth Wilkinson, who will
investigate the franchise, write a
report and make recommenda-
tions.
So far, after less than a week in
which Donaldson has slept little
and spent her days piling through
the flood of audition tapes from
prospective play-by-play an-
nouncers, interviewing coaches
and players for the team’s s ite and
helping to present the organiza-
tion’s new, temporary name, she
believes everything she was told
in the days before taking the job.
She feels that everyone in the
building wants this to be a fresh
start, to end the gloom that has
hovered over the franchise.
One of her favorite memories
of the interview process was a
meeting she had with Rivera,
who, after hearing her story, said,
“What this tells me about you is
you’re a fighter.”
She has repeated those words
often in the days since, believing
them to be another reason she
wanted to take the Washington
job. They come to mind one eve-
ning while she drives home after
another 10 -hour day at the team
headquarters. Her schedule is
full. She still hasn’t met all of her
co-workers. All she can picture
are the tasks piled on her desk
back in the building where she
hopes her new job will allow her
to be the voice she once needed
but never got. It’s a lot. She sighs.
“I have to get this job right,” she
says, and drives onward into the
night.
[email protected]Then came the women who
work for the team. One-by-one
they appeared at her office door
or called on her phone.
“We need this,” Donaldson re-
members one saying.
“We’re so glad you are here,”
another told her.
Suddenly, Donaldson knew she
had made the right decision to
leave her previous job at NBC
Sports Washington to step into an
enormous unknown.
“I believe I can make a differ-
ence,” she says.
She did not come to Washing-
ton’s football team to be invisible.
By description, her role will make
her the face fans see when they
click on the website or tune into
the team’s daily television pro-
gram. Her voice will be impossi-
ble to miss on the radio broadcast.
Next to Coach Ron Rivera, she
might be the organization’s most
visible non-player.
But Donaldson sees her job as
more than being a face on TV or
an executive in an office. The
harassment story hit the team
hard, several people who work
there have said. It left many an-
gry.
Already, Rivera had been try-
ing to instill a new culture of
inclusion to replace one that
many have described as toxic.
Donaldson notices others at-
tempting this, too. She believes
the organization is trying to re-
make itself. She has her own story,
too, a painful one, and she wants
to be a part of the team’s fresh
start.
“I did my homework before
taking this job,” she says.
‘I didn’t need this job’
When Washington first con-
tacted Donaldson just hours after
Michael retired, she was wary.
She knew a significant story
about harassment was about to
break. As a reporter, she had
covered the barren last years of
former team president Bruce Al-
len’s reign. She understood the
team’s problems and wasn’t sure
she wanted to make them her
problems, too.
“I didn’t need this job,” she
says. “I liked what I was doing and
doing it where it was.”
She woke the next morning
certain she would say no. She had
worked too hard to build her
name as a journalist. She didn’t
want to ruin it working for a team
reeling from scandal.
But then she talked to Marcus
Stephenson, the franchise’s head
of digital marketing and pro-
gramming, who had been hired
this past November. On the call,
Stephenson talked about wanting
to reimagine the radio broadcasts
and change the way the team did
its shows. He described a new,
young group of leaders on the
franchise’s business side who
weren’t a part of the past. He told
her that she would fit in, that she
could help make something fresh
and different on the radio broad-
cast and on the team’s website.
“We’re doing something cool
here,” he said.
By the time Donaldson hung
up, she was interested but re-
mained unsure. She called others
in the headquarters. Some she
knew; some she didn’t. “No one is
off-limits,” the team’s executive
vice president and chief market-
ing officer Terry Bateman told
her. Every question would be an-
swered.
“I don’t want to join an organi-
zation I’m not proud of,” she said
to owner Daniel Snyder’s wife,
Tanya, with whom she had
worked on charity projects.
“We’re working on changing
that,” Tanya Snyder replied.
Slowly, Donaldson began to
feel better about the job. She
DONALDSON FROM D1
lence groups. She took part in a
Take B ack the Night Walk in Jack-
sonville. She estimates that she
has told her story to hundreds of
other women. So two days into
her conversations with Bateman,
when he first proposed the idea of
the vice president role, she asked
whether the title would give her
authority to be a voice for the
women who worked for the team.
She told him she wanted the
power to challenge harassment
inside the organization and to be
someone women could approach
if they had problems.
Even after Bateman said yes,
Donaldson called Nancy Hubach-
er, the team’s vice president of
sales and marketing and a friend
since she had come to Washing-
ton. Donaldson had to be sure.
She had come too far from those
weeks in Boston to be given a
ceremonial title and little chance
to have an impact. “If they say you
will be given full support, then
you will be given full support,”
Hubacher told her.
“Somebody needed to speak up
for me when I couldn’t speak up,”
Donaldson says, referring to her
time in Boston. “No one should
ever have to feel alone like that. If
I can say to someone here, ‘I know
what it’s like; let’s talk about this,’courage she had, then left the job
in Boston and moved back home
unsure whether she could go on.
She was 30, and a career that
months before had been soaring
seemed as if it was done. “Some-
one needed to speak up for me
when I couldn’t,” she says. One
day her father walked into a room
to find her sitting in front of a
television with ESPN on the
screen and tears rolling down her
face. She felt lost.
“She was devastated by that
experience,” says Carole Smith, a
family friend and counselor
whom Donaldson describes as
“helping save my life.”
“Not only was she physically
wounded, but she blamed herself
for what happened,” Smith con-
tinues. “All of her hopes and
dreams were shattered.”
For nearly two years, Donald-
son and Smith talked. They
leaned on their shared Christian
faith and they prayed. Smith told
Donaldson the attack wasn’t her
fault. Slowly, Donaldson’s confi-
dence came back. She knew she
could go back to television. Then
in 20 10, an opportunity came at
NBC Sports Washington. She was
ready to begin again.
As she rebuilt her career, she
started talking to domestic vio-early 2008 she took a job covering
Boston’s pro sports teams for
WHDH, the city’s NBC affiliate.
The move to Boston seemed
good. She was going through a
divorce and had started a rela-
tionship with someone she found
caring, a man who played profes-
sional slamball — a combination
of basketball with trampolines.
But on June 27, 2008, that new
boyfriend, Ivan Lattimore, turned
violent, throwing her into the
wall of her apartment and punch-
ing her in the face.
Lattimore eventually pleaded
guilty to assault and was sen-
tenced to a year in prison, but the
Boston press devoured the story,
and it became front page news.
Lattimore talked freely to report-
ers, spinning lewd tales of their
life together that Donaldson
wanted to scream were all lies.
Because of the pending trial,
though, she couldn’t and was left
to read, in agonizing silence, the
salacious news accounts of
WHDH’s “blonde bombshell”
“beauty queen” whose relation-
ship had gone bad.
“I was victimized as the victim,”
she says.
It felt like her world was crum-
bling. She faced Lattimore in
court, which took every bit ofcalled more people, including
friends and parents and the men-
tors whose words had always
been the most honest in the past.
She called people she knew who
hated the team and couldn’t
stand Daniel Snyder. Donaldson
says almost everyone said the
same things: The new executives
were smart. The team wanted to
move away from the past. She
could be a part of the change.
Finally, she knew. She had to take
the job.A personal connection
Donaldson didn’t k now most of
the women who made sexual ha-
rassment claims against the
team, but she ached for them as if
she did. She read their stories and
felt the anger and humiliation
that pulsed from the words. She
knew their hopelessness because
once this had been her, too.
At first her career had seemed
like a dream. Raised in a suburb of
Jacksonville, Fla., she went to the
University of Florida, was named
Miss Florida USA and in the early
2000 s was host of the Miami
Heat’s TV show. She then moved
to New York, where she was a
reporter for the regional sports
station SNY, the network’s young-
est journalist and only woman. InDonaldson’s goal: Make a difference
ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTJULIE DONALDSON
Julie Donaldson, who previously worked at NBC Sports Washington, had trepidations about leaving a job she enjoyed to take a high-
profile role with a franchise dealing with a sexual harassment scandal, deep cultural issues and a delicate re-branding process.“Somebody needed to speak up for me when I couldn’t speak up. No one should ever have to feel alone.”
Julie Donaldson, who was the victim of domestic abuse and sensationalized media coverage earlier in her careerASSOCIATED PRESSNew Orleans Saints quarter-
back Drew Brees said he will re-
main standing for “ The Star Span-
gled Banner” but professed re-
spect and support for those who
protest r acism and social injustice
by kneeling during the national
anthem.
“I’ll always stand for the flag
because of what it means to me
and to honor all those who have
sacrificed, who have served and
died for our country, and all those
who have struggled to move this
country forward,” Brees said Sat-
urday in a conference call with
reporters to discuss the onset of
training camp.
“I acknowledge and respect
anyone who chooses to kneel or
any other form of p eaceful p rotest
to bring attention to social injus-
tice and systemic racism that so
many have endured and continue
to endure in our country,” Brees
continued, adding that h e “always
will support and advocate for
Black and Brown communities in
the f ight for s ocial j ustice.”
The 41-year-old Brees, who is
the NFL’s all-time leader in pass-
ing yards, touchdown throws and
completions, is entering his 20 th
season.
Brees became seen by many as a
symbol of White privilege when he
reiterated in June his long-held op-
position to anyone kneeling duringthe national anthem, saying he
would never approve of anyone
disrespecting the flag. Brees faced
a scathing backlash and apologized
soon afterward. He s aid he realizes
now that protesting by kneeling
during the anthem, initiated by
former San Francisco 49ers quar-
terback Colin Kaepernick in 20 16,
was “never about the f lag.”
Brees revisited his comments
Saturday.
“To think for a second that New
Orleans or the state of Louisiana
or the Black community would
think I was not standing with
them for social justice, that com-
pletely broke my heart. It was
crushing. Never, ever would I feel
that way,” Brees said. “I recognizethat I missed an opportunity that
day. I had an opportunity to talk
about and emphasize the social
injustices that exist for our Black
community a nd our need a s coun-
try to support them and advocate
for systemic change. And my lack
of awareness in that moment h urt
a lot of people.”
l CHARGERS: Joey Bosa
signed a five-year contract exten-
sion that makes him the NFL’s
highest-paid d efensive player.
Bosa and Los Angeles reached
agreement on the new deal Tues-
day night.
The five-year extension is worth
$135 million, which includes
$78 million guaranteed at signing
and $ 102 million overall.The deal eclipses the five-year,
$12 5 million extension that the
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett
signed two weeks ago. That con-
tract included $100 million guar-
anteed for Garrett.
The 6-foot-5, 280-pound Bosa is
going into his fifth season.l (^) LIONS: Quarterback Mat-
thew Stafford was placed on the
novel c oronavirus reserve list, eas-
ily one of the most high-profile
players to land there. The list was
created for players w ho either t est
positive or have been in close con-
tact with an infected p erson.
l COWBOYS: Dallas released
Kai Forbath, clearing the way for
Greg Zuerlein to be its kicker this
season.
l JETS: Linebacker C.J. Mosley
opted out of playing this season
because of family health concerns,
two people familiar with the deci-
sion told t he Associated Press.
l GIANTS: Less than a week
after left tackle Nate Solder opted
out of the season, New York an-
nounced that third-year tackle
Nick Gate signed a two-year e xten-
sion worth a t least $6 million.
l BROWNS: After demanding
a trade last month, tight end David
Njoku indicated he changed his
mind. He tweeted: “I’m all in
Cleveland. Time t o work.”
l JAGUARS: Defensive end
Lerentee McCray opted out of the
season, citing the health and safe-
ty o f his family.
NFL NOTES
Contrite Brees backs protests during anthem but plans to remain standing
professional football