Adviser Update
SUMMER 2012
Page 7A
‘Devolution of sportswriting is complicated’
By RICHARD J. LEVINE
S
PRESIDENT'S PERSPECTIVE
Richard J. Levine
is president of the board of directors of the Dow Jones News Fund Inc.
In five decades with Dow Jones & Co., he has served as vice president
for news and staff development, executive editor of Dow Jones Newswires, vice president of information services, editorial director of electronic publishing and Washington correspondent and columnist for
The Wall Street Journal. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University and
an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Email: [email protected].
P07.V53.I01
Frank Deford
black
Today, of course,
with the Internet,
sportswriting is being
squeezed again, just
as television pressured us ... Notwithstanding, I think there
are more good sportswriters and more good
sportswriting than ever
before.
cyan
magazine put it, has “literary ambitions as
one of its credos and the essay as its primary means of expression.” Then there is
Yahoo! Sports, which has assembled some
of the nation’s finest talent, and Deadspin,
a Gawker site that proclaims it offers
“sports news without access, favor, or discretion.” More focused sites such as Brian’s
Cook’s mgoblog.com, which covers University of Michigan sports, have become mustreads for fanatic fans.
Some newspapers have improved or
expanded their sports
coverage. The New
York Times has won
plaudits for its indepth reporting on the
dangers of life-altering
head injuries in football and hockey, while
the relatively new
sports pages of The
Wall Street Journal
offer fresh insights
and some of the best
writing in the paper.
“What’s happening is
the Internet is decentralizing long-form
sports journalism,”
says a knowledgeable
sports executive who
started as a sportswriter. ”There’s a lot of
good stuff. It’s a great
time to be a content
consumer.”
Though Frank Deford decries the
decline of “stories” about “the characters,
the tales, the humor, the pain” in his new
memoir, the senior contributing editor at
Sports Illustrated, concludes: “Today, of
course, with the Internet, sportswriting
is being squeezed again, just as television
pressured us ... Notwithstanding, I think
there are more good sportswriters and
more good sportswriting than ever before.”
In this sports spat, I choose to give
Deford the last word — because I agree
with him.
magenta
ing.
“Since the mid-1990s, two forces have
diminished classic sports journalism,”
Gary Andrew Poole wrote. “First, television
coverage in general has expanded, making
hype and the sensational aspects of sports
dominant ...The Web, meanwhile, did to
sportswriting what it has done to journalism more broadly: