Wilbon: "There's not as much good [sportswriting] as there used to be."

Charlie Siebert is a magazine guy, I think.

 

Here it is:

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-119344546/story-michigan-state-adam.html

 

Agree with everything Versatile wrote above. Uniqueness is the only way to survive. (Though trust me, it's hardly a golden ticket). If anything, I think there's still too much redundant sports content and too much duplication of effort, and that there will be more culling and consolidation ahead even as the industry as a whole expands.

I also think that the industry changes Versatile describes point toward a future where a top few stars reap bigger and bigger rewards, while the rest fight over a shrinking pie.

 

When I think of what Sports Illustrated was like in the 1980s, I don't think what we get today is even in the same ballpark and I actually think SI is on a fairly big upswing from what it was 5-10 years ago...

I think about the investigative stories that Doug Looney would write, the Boston College point-shaving scandal immediately jumps to mind, and the other scandals at Oklahoma and the former SWC schools and I don't think you see that kind of investigative journalism anywhere these days.

With the exception of the Harrisburg paper, the only good Sandusky/Paterno stories you read were written way after the fact. Even as good as the expose Charles Robinson wrote about the University of Miami was, it was nothing compared to the investigative work that used to appear in SI on a regular basis in the 1980s and 1990s.

The John Williams scandal and Chris Mills Kentucky scandal also jump to mind...

You don't see that kind of reporting at all anymore, from any of the sites...

 

And I don't think you will because the game has changed. The emphasis now is getting the information out there FIRST, no matter how shallow or incorrect it is.

 

Dohrmann on Ohio State?

Williams and Fainaru-Wada on Bonds?

Verducci on baseball and steroids?

The one that stands out, negatively, to me was the big cover blowout SI did a couple years ago about college football players with criminal records. They meticulously went through every roster, and I think the answer was like 5-10 percent - probably just like the general population. And lots of alcohol-related nonsense. But they put the work in, so they had to trumpet it. People seemed to just yawn, and deservedly so.

It's unfortunate that APSE doesn't frequently put up versions of the winning stories each year, because it would be interested to go back and look at the investigative winners, year by year, and see how they measure up.

 

Here are the first five years. I am going to include stories from The National (an actual daily paper), but I won't include pieces from newspaper magazines like the NYT Mag or the LAT Mag or the Boston Glob Mag or Wash Post Mag. As you can see, it's not a huge amount, but they are there, and they are stories in the actual paper, not the Sunday magazine.


1991 (Halberstam):

-Peter Richmand, National Sports Daily, The Sports Fan
-Linda Robertson, Miami Herald, Pride and Poison
-Kevin Sherrington, Dallas Morning News, Ten Days of Torture in Junction
-Charlie Pierce, National Sports Daily, Thieves of Time
-Glenn Nelson, Seattle Times, Comrades of Summer
-Jonette Howard, National Sports Daily, Making of a Goon
-Florence Shinkel, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Fly Away Home
-Peter Richmond, National Sport Daily, Death of a Cowboy

1992 (Thomas McGuane)

-William Gildea, Washington Post, For Ali, Greatness Takes Another Form
-Bryan Woolley, Dallas Morning News, Glory Denied
-Peter Gammons, Boston Globe, The Throes of Tossing a Baseball
-Mike Kupper, Los Angeles Times, Indy Invisible

1993 (Frank Deford)
-Ben Joravsky, Chicago Reader, A Simple Game
-Jennifer Briggs, Dallas Observer, My Life In The Locker Room
-Cory Johnson, Village Voice, Free Falling
-Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press, A Tragedy Too Easy To Ignore
-Mike Littwin, The Baltimore Sun, A Fan Again After All These Years

1994 (Tom Boswell)

-Bud Collins, Boston Globe, Boxing Grieves the Loss of Fifth Street Gym
-Ira Berkow, New York Times, Walking Away While He Still Can
-Ira Berkow, New York Times, For Jenkins Another Tragic Twist in the Road

1995 (Dan Jenkins)
-Bob Verdi, Chicago Tribune, Baseball's Troubles Could Be No Routine Comedy
-Jim Murray, Los Angeles Times, Game Is Too Young To Die
-Tony Kornheiser, Washington Post, National Pastime is Past My Bedtime
-Blackie Sherrod, Dallas Morning News, Baseball Strike: Who Feels The Most Pain?
-J.A. Adande, Washington Post, A Furor Follows Deion's Steps
-Dave Anderson, New York Times, Omaha Beach Has A Golf Course Now
-Robin Finn, New York Times, The Second Time Around For Jennifer Capriati
-Michael Wilbon, Washington Post, Winning Isn't Color Coded
-Furman Bisher, Atlanta Journal, This Ex-Voter Has Had Enough of Heisman Hype
-George Vescey, New York Times, The Survivor Wont Let Time Slip By
-Ian Thomson, International Herald Tribune, This Could Be The Start of a Really Big Career

 

Dohrmann on Minnesota back in the 1990s... Now that was an awesome reporting job.

I don't remember what year the Caminiti story came out. That was incredible work.

I agree that the criminal records story was a major swing and a miss.

 

There are still young hustling newspaper sportswriters investigating and breaking stories -- like Craig Craker -- whose work is then showcased in a new light by the giants such as Wright Thompson.

Craker's career-defining moment: http://lubbockonline.com/stories/051210/spo_637710329.shtml

Thompson's glitter: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=Guerdwich-Montimere

 

Dohrmann's Ohio State story also kind of qualifies as great reporting on a story that most shrugged about - kids trading autographs for tattoos.

 

Disagree that somehow there was more or better investigative stuff done in the past.

PBS/ESPN just launched this last week:

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/concussion-watch/nfl-board-paid-2m-to-players-while-league-denied-football-concussion-link/

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/concussion-watch/frontline-espns-outside-the-lines-team-up-to-examine-nfl-concussions/

I think we overstate how much used to get done, and understate how much is getting done now.

 

Yes, I must agree too.

There's so much less reason to want to be a sportswriter today. It's lost much of its lustre.

And there are so many people in journalism who are wanting to homogenize sportswriting and newswriting. It used to be if you dreamed of becoming a sportswriter, it was encouraged. If you wanted to write the great game story, it was applauded. Today, if you have any talent, they're asking you why you're wasting your time in sports.

And indeed, when you do get down the business of covering sports, you don't get to stay in that little window for extended periods of time. A sex scandal gets in the way. Or a labor strike. Or something else that isn't what you got into it for.

I wouldn't work at being a sportswriter today. I wouldn't have gotten in the business at all.

And we're arguing whether sportswriting was better back then? Ding-ding ... we have a final answer.