Harvard Law to Sports Journalism?

This guy attended Harvard, Harvard Law and quit a DC law firm to be a sportswriter.
Sounds like a decent guy - for a former Ivy-League Lawyer.

http://www.sportsmediaguide.com/

 

interesting interview. loved how he talks with his old buddy about storytelling five times a week.

 

This is one reason why I love SportsJournalists.com. This kind of discussion mixed with that kind of story is exactly why I keep coming back here.

Excellent read. I used to read Caulkins' columns more often but I haven't had a chance to do that much lately.

His point about his writing style fitting Memphis, but it might not fit other markets, is quite dead-on.

 

His kindred spirit is Brad Snyder, who is a Duke graduate who worked for the Baltimore Sun for a couple of years after college, then went to Yale Law School (only one more highly regarded than the "H-Bomb"), then recently quit his fancy, high-paying law firm job to write a book on Curt Flood's fight for free agency.

 

These days I don't think it's that uncommon to see people go from an Ivy League or comparable (Duke, Stanford...) into journalism... All I know is that if my parents had paid $30K a year to send me to an Ivy and I went into journalism, they'd probably have killed me...

Calkins is definitely one of the best in this business...

 

calkins acknowledges leigh montville as his model.

montville is writing decent books - but it's too bad he doesn't have a column.

the young writers on this board never got to read montville at his best.

 

Mizzou - I'm wondering if Calkins comes from wealth. Not that it's any of my business. But all those fancy-schmancy degrees ... I would think a lot of parents of means, to whom money isn't too much of an object, might value education for the sake of education. Not just as a monetary investment. And others - the same ones, in fact, in a lot of cases - figure that the prestige and experience of an Ivy education is worth the price tag, no matter what it leads to.

Me? I'd have gotten slapped upside the head.

 

I had a close friend from high school who went to Stanford. It was his lifelong dream to go to school there and be a sports joournalist... in that order...

His first job, he was making $11 an hour covering preps. That's fine, but it's not fine when you have over $100K in student loans...

 

pringle, many (maybe not most, but plenty) of people realize that college is more than just a trade school to prepare you for a career. but you're talking to mizzou here who repeatedly bashes any journalist who spends money on an expensive education and doesn't go to j-school.

calkins seems to say that without harvard he might not have made it to where he is today. he refers to harvard law but who knows if he'd have made it to harvard law without harvard undergrad.

fwiw, i know several journalists who were successful - defined as working in a major metro - at a young age who went to harvard. most work in news that i know of. if i'm not mistaken the harvard crimson cranks out tons of reporters every year.

 

But it's tough to apply your value system to someone else. It's like the old philosophical brain bender about what it's like to be a bat.

 

Cardinals' mlb.com writer is a Harvard man, as are some SI writers.