Is deadline writing no longer good enough for BASW?

You can't really take it that far. Personally, I believe that everyone reads these books looking for different things. I loved reading the older editions and seeing deadline writing, features, etc.

 

Part of your confusion, and Ryan's, is that you were reading a difference series. BASW in its current form, has existed since 1991. It bears only a spiritual connection to the other thing that is so fondly remembered when this issue pops up every year or two.

 

I think there is one reason that deadline writing is not featured. The Internet.

As a reader in the early 70's growing up in Denver I could read only the AP version of a major event. The Post and News did not staff most national events (I think only the Super Bowl). So it was very interesting to read a really well done article on the final game of the World Series or an event in the Olympics. As a sometimes purchaser of the book I would find reading something like that today redundant because so much is available to me on the Internet. I want to read something fresh and for me that would almost always be a takeout piece.

 

Is this an explanation or a defense of the process? I really can't tell.

I get that it's two people. But they have, for a decade, chosen one kind of writing to the complete exclusion of another. Unless Bob Ryan's full or hyperbole or BS - I haven't looked through the last decade of books here in the last 24 hours - then it would appear the process no longer believes deadline writing can make the list. I mean, that's not an emotional sentence there. If Bob Ryan's right, it's just a reasonable deduction based on years of consistent behavior.

And that's really notable, because it appears to have disqualified a giant chunk of what sportswriters do.

 

It's not a defense. It is an explanation.

Stout makes it very clear in one of the intro essays to one of the books the collection is not one of the best American "sportswriting." It is the best American sports "writing." (Two words.) I have issues with the series, have enjoyed some selections and not others, but have learned to accept it for what it is.

 

In fact, in the vast majority of cases, I think that the knock against long-form articles, that they are "writerley" or masturbatory, is way more applicable to shorter stories written on deadline.
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I don't doubt you, but prove it.

 

I don't doubt you, but prove it.
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I don't have any empirical studies at the ready, but the following - considered a classic of deadline writing - is far more writerley than anything I've seen in BASW in some time:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=2118859

 

I'd probably need Glenn to explain that, but I'm not sure how that line informs the selections, unless it presumes "form" necessarily dictates quality, and that it dictates it 100 percent of the time, as the book's selections would apparently suggest.

It's not 70/30, if Bob's right. It's 100/0. This is two kinds of companies bidding for city contracts over the course of 10 years, and one company getting the contract every time. At some point, the losing company would probably ask three questions:

A. Are we even the right company to be bidding for this contract?
B. If not, why not, and does the "why" make reasonable sense?
C. If so, is the process biased against us in an unreasonable way?

It may just be that deadline writing has no place in the anthology going forward and never will.

 

You all are ignoring one component: Deadline writing doesn't hold up as well a year later as feature and investigative writing. Best American Sports Writing is not an award. It's a book compiled with readers in mind.

 

Dan Wetzel's article on Tom Brady following the 2012 Super Bowl and on Colt McCoy/Garrett Gilbert both hold up pretty damn well. Both were written on deadline. Neither was included.

 

I am glad you posted that link. Because I remembered once again that this story was one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever read.

On deadline.

 

It's flowery, though. It's very good, but it's flowery. It's writerly, which is the accusation often tossed at "longform," when, again, deadline writers are the ones who have to rise to the occasion with soaring prose more often, I feel like.