Best American Sports Writing 2018, Jeff Pearlman guest editor

The Athletic entry is pretty disingenuous.

 

There are two entries from The Athletic.
I'm guessing you're not pointing at Dave Kindred's.

 

I'm pointing to the fact Jeff gets paid by The Athletic, and possibly still by SB Nation though he may have given them up.

Just hope Dave sends Jeff a Thank You letter because Jeff hates not getting Thank You letters.

Although to be fair, we had to have seen it coming.



He was named guest editor a month later.

 

Well, everybody works somewhere.

I don't recall similar upset when Gammons or Bryant or Thompson chose from ESPN, or Montville or Nack picked up pieces from SI.

The conflict of interest is baked in, so it's almost unavoidable.

 

Anything is avoidable.

But hey, they've always done it so let em keep doing it.

 

The other point being, if it's guest "editor" then perhaps have it be an actual editor otherwise it's just writers slurping writers.

 

Glenn Stout - who makes the first cut of all these selections - is an actual editor.

 

Then call the guest editor a guest cheerleader. This isn't difficult.

 

I don't doubt there's a different ways to do this. There certainly are many ways to do collections.

But even if you hired a guest editor to sort through every sports piece in a given year, you're likely going to wind up with one or two accusations of favoritism no matter what or who.

Unless you eliminate humans from the selection process entirely, do the whole thing with an algorithm, the complaint of unfairness is always possible.

As true of the Pulitzers as it is of BASW.

 

Pearlman reads Kindred's story, thinks it's brilliant, then a month later gets tapped by BASW.

One of his first thoughts is probably, "Hey, that Kindred piece, for sure," and where's the crime in that?

 

Glenn sent me a message clarifying something I posted on twitter about this, and I'm guessing it's fair to post it here. Glenn wrote "As I've repeatedly noted in the BASW FOREWORDS and elsewhere, I don’t select the guest editor, my editor at HMH, Susan Canavan does. And the guest editor is always free to make selections outside of my submissions, and in this case Jeff made a majority of picks on his own."

 

Sidebar here for young writers or students or anyone who asks to have a recommendation written: Mr. Pearlman's right.

Send a prompt note of thanks.