I’ve been a fan of independent sports writing long
before I decided to become a fledgling blogger. Some of my favorite reads over the years have been www.benmaller.com , www.sportsbybrooks.com , and www.deadspin.com. Will Leitch, editor of DeadSpin, is going to be a member of Media Bistro’s “Breaking Into Sports Journalism” panel on April 24th. Just make sure you don’t call Leitch a journalist:
“I proudly proclaim that I don’t work in sports journalism, because sports journalism is no fun. I prefer to just write about sports and apply journalistic practices to my work. But being a sports journalist is a very depressing label. So anyway, I started Deadspin.com, wrote every day for about two years, and then people were calling me a sports journalist. I seriously hope it’s not that easy.”
All humbleness aside, Leitch and crew at DeadSpin have changed the sports journalism landscape, not to mention the comments policy over at ESPN.com. And speaking of ESPN, there’s a number of ESPN employees on the panel with Will. Is WL keeping his enemies the WWL close or chatting with future co-workers?
Will Leitch to appear on sports journalism panel. Courtesy of Media Bistro
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June 12th, 2007 at 12:15 am
HG-
Will is a writer and is right to claim that he is in no way a journalist. To confuse the writing at Deadspin or 99% of sports blogs and Indy sports websites with journalism is to do a disservice to the profession.
Now, that’s not to say that Will can’t make the small leap to journalism. As Leonard Shapiro, former sports editor at the Washington Post said to me (it’s close to an exact quote, but I’m sure I’m paraphrasing a wee bit): I loathe hiring journalism majors because they usually don’t know anything about the world. I’d much rather hire an English major or an anthropology major. An English major has a grasp of past and present writing styles and an anthropology major has an understanding of societies and cultures. I can teach them journalism writing in a month, but I can’t teach a journalism major to see.