Jane Leavy's BASW 2011 picks are out

I think that depends upon how closely and how much the GE reads in a given year. With all the reading I do, I think I could probably guess a fair number of sources, but in general, I think you are correct that in most instances only a handful of writers are gerenallytn recognizable to the more casual reader.

The reason I release the contents early is that galley/review copies are already circulating and the authors know they are in. I'm just not comfortable doing the same with the notable list.

 

I think some pretty damn good writing is done at papers with a circ of less than 250,000. But historically I remember BASW as mostly running feature stories. With staff and space cuts how many newspapers are giving staff the time to create a good, original feature story? My memory of many of the newspapers stories that made BASW is that they ran in the Sunday magazine and how many of them are left?

 

A lot of these names started out at smaller papers. I believe Thomas Lake's "2 on 5" from a few years back about an Alabama high school basketball game was written as a freelance piece and ended up in Sports Illustrated while he was working in Florida.
The best career advice I ever received was not to expect your employer to give you opportunities to better your career, you have to take them on your own.
I worked with a guy years ago who wrote something - it was rejected as not being local enough - he submitted it to a national publication and it was published. And he is in the book this year.

 

I agree, and to a degree, that makes sense. I'd love to see more investigative pieces (such as the ABC piece), but as far as gamers and more normal, short features, they wouldn't provide the BASW with the kind of shelf life it requires as a published book. You can pick up any edition and read it today and not have to worry that the stories will seem dated.

 

That made me laugh.

 

No Gary Smith.

 

After seeing this thread, I posted a few thoughts about getting into the BASW on my blog:

http://patrickhruby.blogspot.com/2011/08/luck-opportunity-and-best-american.html

It takes so much luck and opportunity, and even then, there are many more deserving pieces than spots, each and every year. I'm not so sure I should care so much about this book, or that any of us should. But I'm glad we do, because it probably pushes all of us to do the hard, uncomfortable work of extending beyond what we think we're capable of. I know it pushes me.

If we all write better stories because of said push, then our readers benefit. And Glenn is doing something very good for our field.

 

Mr R,

And here I thought you were EJ Hradek.

YSH, etc

 

While it would be nice to have a book format reward for well-written gamers, short columns, etc., I agree it's impossible. As a kid, my local library had a collection of Best Sports Stories of 1950, 1951, etc., published by who knows whom, and they were all magazine pieces, too. Of course, there were many more general interest magazines publishing sports pieces back then.

 

Mr G,

"All magazine pieces" ... hardly. I own those books, have them sitting in front of me. You've misremembered.

There were many newspaper stories in those collections. You could see something from, say, a Pittsburgh newspaper guy filing from a heavyweight title fight. There were entries from True and Argosy, from Bill Heinz and Ed Linn and the like. But, if anything, I suspect there was a bias to newspapers rather than away from them in those collections. Best Sports Stories anthologies are great for tracking evolving trends in sportswriting. And what's neat in BSS and lacking in BASW: the judges account for and explain their voting for first-place stories over other finalists.

God, I'm so old I remember reading back issues of Argosy and True.

YHS, etc

 

Interesting. I wonder why the BASW guest editors never have to explain their choices. It would be a great addition, I think because not every reader will agree with every decision. If you have the authority to be tapped as the guest editor of BASW, you might as well offer your expert insight as to why you selected each specific piece.

What do you guys think about that?