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

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Double Down, Nov 28, 2012.

  1. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    The thread is now drifting in a different direction from Wilbon's point, which is that there isn't as much "good writing" out there.

    It's not about the life being harder or the investigations being fewer, but that there are no Frank Defords or Tony Kornheisers or Ralph Wileys. That's where I believe he's incorrect.
     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    There's also a difference of opinion on what good writing is anyway. I'm sure Wilbon would take Albom and Plaschke in the first round still. Those two aren't so popular around here.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    He loves Kornheiser. Not just his friend, but his friend's writing.

    Kornheiser likes to brag about how little he knows about sports.

    You think that flies today?
     
  4. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    One thing leads into another. Small-town nobody sportswriter breaks a story and Wright paints the larger picture -- but there are 25 Wrights out there right now who could have done the same thing, and 25 is just a conservative number.
     
  5. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    You think about the "big name" local sportswriter and more likely than not, he may not be tweeting in the Press Box but he might have a radio show and weekly TV spots on the local cable channel.

    I'm sure there is a generation of people that don't even think of Wilbon or Kornheiser (and especially not Bayless) as writers. They have become personalities that overshadow whatever writing they still do or have done. Rick Reilly might be the poster boy of this "evolution."
     
  6. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    I'm more encouraged right now by the state of sportswriting - the quality, the number of good writers - than I was, oh, 1992-2005. There are fewer good-paying jobs, which stinks. But the ambition, the risk-taking, the willingness to pose hard, essential questions...I'm encouraged.
     
  7. Hey Diaz!

    Hey Diaz! Member

    I don't have much to add, other than to say I agree wholeheartedly with DD and Dick.

    And even getting past the SIs, Grantlands, etc., there is an incredible amount of good sports writing on BLOGS!

    A few bloggers for my favorite major league baseball team, people with no media training or even a press pass, who merely do it as an escape from their "real word" jobs, cover/editorialize the team's going-ons so well (and often, so eloquently) that I rarely seek out the traditional newspaper beat writers for news. And then you have someone like Craig Calcaterra, who today wrote one of the more informative, thoughtful and well-reasoned pieces on why Bonds and Clemens deserve HOF induction you'll read.

    There's a wealth of great writing out there today, regardless of what you enjoy. You just have to roll up the newspaper and come to grips that you'll have to find it elsewhere.
     
  8. jr/shotglass

    jr/shotglass Well-Known Member

    So sayeth the pitiful master.
     
  9. Elliotte Friedman

    Elliotte Friedman Moderator Staff Member

    Allow me to join DD and Versatile. Wilbon is wrong. Things are just different. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that a person who has adapted so well to the "new wave" of media doesn't see that.

    I was born in 1970. I loved great writing as a kid; gobbled up all of it I could find. Got my SI subscription in 1982 and kept it for 25 years. Read every issue cover-to-cover, dreamed of the day when my byline would be in the magazine. And what did I imagine writing? Was it Scorecard or This Week in College Basketball? No, it was the big takeout at the end of issue or some lengthy investigative report in the middle.

    I haven't collected many BASWs, but the ones I do have are all full of lengthy stories. They were excellent, no doubt. Then, my horizons widened to Esquire, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker -- seeing terrific writing there, too.

    But, when I got to university and missed every class to work at the student newspaper, I learned that it takes talent to write a good, short piece, too. That, sometimes, it isn't just about length, but brevity and concise writing. I really struggled with that and gained respect for those who could do it well.

    We're like size queens -- if it's not long enough it can't be good.

    There's a lot of that in the newspaper/magazine world, especially when it comes to people older than me.

    There are other factors hurting our industry:

    1) Newspapers are owned by corporations now with less interest in investigative reporting. 2) It also battles the same issues we have in TV, where a ridiculous amount of people believe no one wants to watch/read anything for more than two minutes.
    3) Teams wield their access over all media more than ever, which is a third factor. There's a general unwillingness to rattle cages if the consequence is giving up your "spot."
    4) We spread ourselves pretty thin -- tweeting, doing videos, radio interviews, etc.

    But, that doesn't mean it isn't there. I follow an absurd amount of people on twitter (more than 900, most of them sports), and I'm constantly amazed at the links that really make me think. Some of it is reporting, some of it is analysis, some of it is takeout. Aren't all of those supposed to be part of "great writing?"

    There's lots of it.

    My biggest question to Wilbon would be, "What are you reading?" I could be wrong, but I'd guess that he reads (or tries to read) the same things he read 20 years ago. Has he changed his habits? Because, if he's searching the same sports sections or SI, he won't find as much. But, if he looks elsewhere, there's plenty to choose from.
     
  10. jr/shotglass

    jr/shotglass Well-Known Member

    The master. But thanks for the setup.
     
  11. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    I think there is probably not as much good feature writing in newspapers as there was 30-40 years ago. The reason is simply lack of opportunity.

    When BASW was issued this year there were complaints that the magazine writers dominated and newspaper writers were underrepresented. So I pulled the BASW from 1972 that I had found at a garage sale. It was dominated by newspaper writers but a lot of the material was from the Sunday magazines. I don't have time to dig up the book but the feature contest was won by a Philadelphia writer (Sandy Grady?) for piece in the Sunday magazine. How many papers have a magazine anymore?

    And with the cuts in staff and changes in the industry feature there are simply not as many good feature writers. I remember Kornheiser as a feature writer from Newsday and I believe he spent his first couple of years as a feature writer at the Post. How many papers have the staff or inclination to devote that kind of talent to features.

    But another reason are the demands of the marketplace. With better analytics about what is actually read in the paper my guess is that features simply do not draw the clicks that beat reporters do. That may be a bad thing but I think it is reality. Which has lead to vast improvements in beat reporting, which has steadily gotten better.
     
  12. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    You could say there is less good sports writing now because there are fewer places to practice professional sports writing.

    Whenever you remember 20, 30, or 40 years ago, you can always remember some great things in writing, music, movies, television, or whatever. What you tend to forget is stuff that was awful during your pleasant memories. When I was in high school in the late 60s and early 70s, I can remember songs like "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who and "Move On Up" by Curtis Mayfield. There was also junk like "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies.

    Wright Thompson, who was mentioned earlier, did an excellent ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the Mississippi football team which went undefeated in 1962 but was overshadowed by the riots by segregationists during the same period.

    Maybe it is just a question of having different formats and sports writing requiring more formats to master.
     
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