sportswriting - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Give to the rich, take from the poor, that’s what sports has done for yearsBrett Favre has been justly criticized for his alleged role in diverting funds from Mississippi’s welfare fund to a pet project of a volleyball court. His daughter played for the team, and with about $135 million in career earnings, he could certainly have managed a donation himself. Mississippi is ...

After Retrial, T.J. Simers Wins $15.45 Million Judgment Against The Los Angeles TimesBoth sides eventually appealed a 2015 verdict that granted former Los Angeles Times hack sports columnist T.J. Simers $7.1 million in an age and disability discrimination suit against the paper. The Times appealed because holy shit, $7.1 million! Simers appealed because the amount was less than the...

If John Beilein Is Such A Good Person, Why Was He A College Basketball Coach?Longtime Michigan men’s basketball coach John Beilein announced yesterday that he’s leaving the university to take over as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. It’s a move plenty of other college coaches have made before, but the departure of Beilein—reportedly beloved, supposedly clean, and, at 66, d...

Dan Jenkins Had It

My relationship with Dan Jenkins goes back decades, and it is a simple one. He wrote words and I read them over and over again. I have no strained connection with him that would somehow label me as more blessed or important for knowing him. I know people I like very much who knew him, that’s all. I ...

NJ.com's Sports Director Sounds Like The Boss From Hell

Last week, Kevin Manahan, sports director of NJ.com, posted on his Twitter account to let the public know that he was looking for a Philadelphia 76ers beat writer. You couldn’t quite call this a job listing, as he was offering a monthly stipend rather than a salary or benefits; whatever it was, his ...

Pittsburgh's Cutting-Edge Sports Site Is A Meat Grinder Of A Workplace

On the night of Sunday, Jan. 21, as the entirety of the sports world was consumed with football and the results of the NFL’s conference championships, Dejan Kovacevic made an announcement. It was almost understated, given the importance of the changes to his site, DK Pittsburgh Sports. Kovacevic wr...

The Fallout From Sportswriting's Filthiest Fuck-Up

The article hangs on a wall in my office. I am actually staring at it as I write this—it is taped, slightly crooked, to the white paint above my desk, positioned between a Chicago Blitz bumper sticker, a picture of my mother’s late Uncle John, and a photograph from the 1987 Mahopac High School fresh...

Iconic Sports Writer Frank Deford Dead At 78

Frank Deford, the legendary sports writer who worked for Sports Illustrated and NPR for decades, died yesterday in his home in Key West. Deford wrote some of Sports Illustrated’s most celebrated profiles, and he began to work as a correspondent for NPR’s Morning Edition in 1980. He retired from the ...

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The Future Of Feature Writing Is Woof Woof Bark Aww

If you’re a regular reader of feature journalism on the internet, you have encountered what we at Deadspin sometimes refer to as the “Snow Fall” treatment, after the famous New York Times story that launched the phenomenon. This is when a publisher packages a (typically lengthy) feature story with f...

by Albert Burneko|

|Mon Mar 06 2017

The Writer Who Was Too Strong To Live

Jennifer Frey drank herself to death....

by Dave McKenna|

|Thu Nov 03 2016

This year’s edition of The Best American Sports Writing honors—like it has every previous year—almost exclusively white men. It’s an industry-wide problem....

by Barry Petchesky|

|Fri Sep 16 2016

AP Stylebook Declares Which College Teams Get To Go By Their Initials

I said this the last time I blogged about the Associated Press sports styles, and I’ll say it again: I find this stuff fascinating, and it’s my blog, so if you don’t like it you can just go right back to the toilet you came from....

by Barry Petchesky|

|Wed Nov 18 2015

Sports Writing: Two Words

The 25th edition of Houghton-Mifflin Harcout’s superior Best American Sports Writing series is out. The good folks over at SB Nation were good enough to reprint series editor Glenn Stout’s introduction. ...

by Alex Belth|

|Thu Oct 08 2015

AP Stylebook Says No More "Dingers" [Updates]

At the American Copy Editors Society's annual meeting in Pittsburgh today, updates to and new entries in the 2015 Associated Press Stylebook are being revealed. This news will not affect you at all. But I think it's interesting, so go to hell....

by Barry Petchesky|

|Fri Mar 27 2015

The Worst American Sportswriting Of 2014

Sportswriting as an enterprise is doing just fine, and there are any number of fine year-end wrap-ups celebrating the best work by the best people in our profession. But where's the fun in that? Here, in no particular order, are the worst sports things we read this year, every one of them special in...

by Kyle Wagner|

|Wed Dec 31 2014

Reggie Jackson's Third-Person Apology For Harassing A Female Beat Writer

Vice Sports has a very good profile of Lisa Saxon, who in the 1980s became one of the first female sportswriters on an MLB beat. The harassment—verbal, mental, and physical—that she dealt with was hellish, but at least she was able to achieve to a sort of peace with one of her chief tormentors, Regg...

by Barry Petchesky|

|Mon Nov 17 2014