Columnistosaurus

A great columnist in a local market is more and more rare. It's harder, for one thing; you have to compete with many more opinion-makers - radio, Internet - and, unless you do your homework, they might know more than you do about any given topic. And it's harder, with life the way it is - with kids and families living what amounts to a 16-hour daily calendar - to fuel up five times a week. To write with precision and style and a strong voice and know that some lawyer only has to be right once a week on one topic that his OCD brain has pored over 12 times more than you, because law is a fabulously overrated profession.

You fire off an 800-word postgame column you like from a NFL game that's precise and pointed and you're rolling home to a mental checklist with 20 things on it, three other, 2,000-word tomes from fan sites that use profanity and crude jokes and draw 200 comments, and Bobby Hebert's incredible "honesty" in a post-game presser.

Compare that to a Yahoo or ESPN or Grantland paying you more money to write less, for as long as you wish, with fewer concerns about conflict of interest, with a hall pass to stylistic freedom and you get Wright Thompson buying Les Miles' family pizza and waxing poetic about the New Orleans Times-Picayune instead of, you know, working as a columnist for the Times-Picayune. Because that job doesn't come with pizza, weeklong access or zero responsibility to write that Miles' team shit the bed in its own backyard. (Not that he won't, but he doesn't have to.)

It's a harder road less traveled, it's a harder road to travel, it comes with less money and more responsibility to the subjects you'll see year after year after year, and, if you really care about the paper's overall product, you act as a de facto editor who fights for good projects and the rest of the writing staff.

No, I never did it. And I don't know a lot of talented young people who want to do it for long once the Web sites come calling with sugarplums of more money for their spouses to spend and their kids to blow on select travel teams.

 

Well said, as always, and true, but, I think, 'twas always true. Newspapers have forever been too cheap to keep good help. I can name you a bunch of wonderful sports columnists across the last 100 years who left newspapers for a different life, not necessarily an easier life but usually one that paid more money, from Ring Lardner to John Schulian, from John Kieran to Pete Dexter, from Westbrook Pegler and Jimmy Breslin to Diane Shah, Selena Roberts and Joe Posnanski. Remembering, too, the potential columnists who chose Sports Illustrated instead: Kirkpatrick, Deford, Price, Smith, Verducci, Layden, Taylor.

 

But the Internet is a whole new outlet and portal for opportunities. And I shouldn't lump Yahoo and a few other sites into it. Some of those folks work ridiculously hard.

Anyway, you're right, and I think the difference is this: Young folks read so much online, and they see these 5,000-word paeans to whatever, and think: "I want to do that." Then they see that the columnist at the paper they're at has another 15 years and they think: "Don't want to wait. Can't wait." Smaller dailies aren't much different and are in fact, worse; it's a like a Supreme Court appointment at some of those. You might grow up in the town, set your heart on staying there, and write like Thomas Lake, and Hoary Doe is not losing that job.

SO I can't blame them. I don't blame you, of course, but look: It'd be neat if you identified 20 people under 40 -- at newspapers -- who ought to have their own columns. Can be in any section.

 

"20 who should find a way out of newspapers - STAT!"

 

Readers that want to be well informed are far better off today than they have ever been before. You could fill a newspaper with your pick of columnists from the days of yore, and I'd still prefer Internet. The problem isn't that newspapers won't invest in columnists, the problem is with the form itself. It may take quite a bit of skill to craft a 800-word column on the local baseball team one day and another on the local basketball team the next. But it's not really a skill that benefits engaged readers.

The value of the general sports columnist, like the value of the newspaper, has plummeted with the creation of the Internet. I no longer need the newspaper, or columnist, to aggregate information for me. With the Internet, it takes no effort for me to add an additional information source--from anywhere on the world, on any topic--to my reading list. I become my own expert by relying on a series of expert--I don't need the columnist to be the expert in four sports for me.

I'm not a homer. I don't need to read uninformed 2,000 word "rants". I don't gain particular enjoyment out of the use of cusswords. But I do enjoy reading people with expertise, passion, and a desire to form a engaged and informed community of readers--which many writers on the Internet aspire to provide. I can read Alan Sepinwall or Todd VanDerWerff on TV, Mark Thoma or Arnold Kling on economics, and Andrew Sullivan or Kevin Drum on politics--rather than whatever dribble the hacks--save Krugman--on the Washington Post or NY Times Op-ed pages serve up in 800 words on any given day.

Rather than bemoan the Internet, the best writers--including former columnists--should embrace it. Joe Posnanski is the perfect example. Twenty years ago, he would have been limited to 800 words a few days a week--never would we get the beauty of thousands of words of analysis on HoF candidates. Twenty years ago, he would have been read by only people in the KC-area--never would I get to read him from hundreds of miles away everyday. And twenty years ago, much of the conversation would be one-way--never would we get to read the response from all his brilliant readers.

No one gains--not the writers, and not the readers--from trying to shoehorn stories into the storyforms created decades ago. Instead of lamenting the death of the general sports columnist, we should celebrate the choice the Internet provides us. The best writers and reporters are no longer hamstrung by having to cover a multiple sports in very limited way. They can specialize in a topic and convey information to readers in whatever form they choose. Too much specialization risks a limited worldview, but writers benefit from the same access to all sorts of information readers do. And we're all better off because of it.

 

COLUMNS!!!

 

But the medium makes huge difference. Mark Thoma has always specialized in economics, but if my pre-Internet local newspaper editor decided not to have an economics column--or doesn't let non-journalists write it--I would never have a chance to read him. Alan Sepinwall has always specialized in TV, but if space constraints limit him to 800 words a day, I would never have the opportunity to read his (and his fans) episode-by-episode takes on my favorite TV shows. Andrew Sullivan has always specialized in politics, but if my local newspaper editor gives a column to a hack like Tom Friedman instead, I would never gain any real insight.

 

I think there is definitely value in the columnist who understands the pulse of the city, who commands an air of authority with his or her words, who has the drive to do the job well, even after many years, because they feel a responsibility to the community. I find myself a bit at the crossroads in my own career with this, because there is a part of me that is ready to move on to a magazine, but there is also a part of me that feels like when/if that happens, I'll have missed the opportunity to play that role in a city I have real affection for. Because I know I could do that well in a way that would actually connect with readers -- especially ones who are tired of the same wocka wocka wocka routine from the current columnists they read. Readers can tell when you really care and when you're just doing it for the fame, the money and the prestige. And if someone really cares, if he understands the way the city works and the history behind every story, they're likely going to have more authority than the guy who blogs about the exact same topic on Comcast.

I think lcjjdnh's point about Posnanski is an excellent one. A columnist today shouldn't just be filing 800-word takes two hours after an NFL game and then disappearing for two days until it's his/her turn to write again. They should be taking advantage of the limitless space on the net when it's time to tackle a subject they really care about.

 

Interesting stuff, but I'm pretty sure Kindred was already going to put you on his "20 potential columnists under 40" list.

 

I don't even really know what you're trying to imply here.