The Other 51

Jeff Di Veronica, who has covered sports in Rochester for nearly two decades, joins Brian this week.

Jeff talks about the challenges that covering high-school sports present reporters. How do you balance accurately reporting what happens in a game with being sensitive to the fact that you’re covering high school kids? How do you critically cover the behavior of some parents when they make up your core audience? How has the job over his nearly two decades in Rochester?

Jeff also discusses how some parents have “email muscles” with both reporters and coaches, and what makes Rochester such a unique sports market.

Jeff DiVeronica

Jeff on Twitter

Powered by their rabid fan base, Knighthawks lacrosse keeps flying high

Angry parents cost this Honeoye coach his job and reputation so he sued them and won $50K

Ruling on Red Creek basketball parent’s appeal against Section V expected June 22

Epsiode 47: Detective Work with Scott Pitoniak

Jamal Lewis Making Most of Post-NFL Life—but Preparing for Darker Days to Come

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It’s a weird flip of the podcast world this week. Normally, Brian co-hosts The Flip Side, a podcast about sports, media and other stuff with Dr. Galen Clavio. But this week, Galen joins Brian to talk about sports media and writing.

Galen, the director of the National Sports Journalism Center and a professor at Indiana University’s media school, discusses his career path from minor-league hockey play-by-play guy to academia. He talks about how writing helped him in his play-by-play and broadcasting career, and how the job is often about figuring out how words go together.

Galen and Brian also talk about the challenges of teaching sports media in an ever-changing marketplace, and their research and writing processes. Galen talks about why the literature review is so important and why he always does the introduction last. He also remembers what it was like covering Bobby Knight’s firing from Indiana as a member of the student media.

There is also news about The Flip Side. And talk about Vlade Divac’s hypothetical burner Twitter accounts.

Galen Clavio on Twitter

National Sports Journalism Center

The Flip Side

Trusting the ESPN Process

Crooked Letters

The Curious Case of Bryan Colangelo and the Secret Twitter Account

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Matthew Fairburn, who covers the Buffalo Bills for NYUpstate.com (or Syracuse.com, or The Post-Standard, depending on which generation you belong to), joins Brian this week for a deep dive into life on an NFL beat.

Matthew discusses how he got the job as a Bills beat writer on a one-season trial, and what it was like for him to not only start a new beat at a paper, but to be dropped onto an NFL beat fresh out of college. Matthew and Brian talk about what it means to cover an NFL team with a digital-first mentality and also how to balance doing something different with your coverage while also giving readers the news they’re looking for.

Matthew also breaks down Josh Allen and gives Brian reasons to be optimistic about the Bills in the future.

As a bonus, Matthew reveals what he was supposed to be doing the New Year’s Eve when Doug Marrone quit as Bills coach.

Matthew Fairburn at NYUpsate.com

Matthew Fairburn on Twitter

The Power of Media Narratives and the Bills’ Playoff Drought

You Gotta Play Hurt by Dan Jenkins

Matt Millen Fights For His Life: ‘It’s Getting Late. We Need a Big Stop’

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Tom Wolfe, the iconic American journalist and novelist, died on May 15 at the age of 88.

In lieu of the usual interview, Brian talks to several previous guests of The Other 51 about their memories of Wolfe. Mike Sielski of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Baxter Holmes of ESPN (with a quick Twitter appearance from novelist Rebecca Makkai) discuss how they discovered Tom Wolfe and what he meant to them, their careers and journalism.

EPISODE 18: SARAN WRAP OCTOPUS WITH MIKE SIELSKI

Episode 62: The Stream of Time with Rebecca Makkai

Epsiode 57: Untold Stories with Baxter Holmes

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You probably know Kevin Blackistone best from his regular appearances on ESPN’s “Around the Horn.” But he’s also a professor of practice at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, a longtime sports columnist (at both the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning-News and more), an author, a contributor to NPR and much more. As he said at the Summit on Communication and Sport, he’s like a NASCAR driver — he has a lot of labels.

Kevin joins Brian to talk about his career in journalism, his origin story growing up in Washington, D.C. and who he read growing up that influenced him to become a journalist. Kevin and Brian discuss how all journalism is advocacy in one form or another as well as what is and is not changing in the sports media landscape.

Kevin describes life as a sports columnist in the 1990s, including his story about the night of Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear.

Special thanks to Dr. Galen Clavio and The Media School at Indiana University for hosting this week’s episode.

Kevin Blackistone on Twitter

Kevin Blackistone at Maryland

IACS 18

Baked of Bloomington

THE STATE OF THE BLACK MANAGER IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL WOULD DISGUST JACKIE ROBINSON

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It’s a podcast bowl game, of sorts, and Bryan Curtis from The Ringer joins Brian this week at the IACS 11th Summit on Communication and Sport. Bryan, who is The Ringer’s editor-at-large and media critic, compares the conference to the Final Four or the Combine and talks about some of the interesting research he saw this past weekend.

Bryan and Brian (it’s not confusing) talk about the state of sports journalism and sports media. What do you do when the villain in the story is just the march of history? Bryan discusses how reading the Dallas Morning News as a kid influenced him, what his perfect sports media world would look like, the value he sees in reading print newspapers every day, and why people seem to care so much about media news.

Brian also tries to defend his love of Jurassic World, much to Bryan’s dismay.

Special thanks to Dr. Galen Clavio and The Media School at Indiana University for hosting this week’s episode.

Bryan Curtis

Bryan Curtis on Twitter

IACS 2018: 11th Summit on Communication and Sport

The Loneliest Beat in the NBA

After Each Attack He Carried the Wounded. Then He Became a Victim

The Brilliant Chaos Behind America’s Best Radio Show

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Kendall Baker is the curator and creator of Sports Internet, which is one of the best daily sports newsletters available on the internet. 

But what makes a daily sports newsletter interesting and worth it?

Kendall joins Brian this week to talk about his daily process in creating the newsletter and breaks down the skills that are needed to create a newsletter. What makes a newsletter good, and why are newsletters so popular in this media age? He discusses how he iterated many different versions of the Sports Internet and how living on the West Coast is the ultimate competitive advantage. He also gives Brian advice on how he could teach newsletters in his online journalism class. 

Sports Internet

Kendall Baker

What the Arlee Warriors Were Playing For

Billion-Dollar Blessings

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Another lifetime ago, Brian and Evan Drellich spent summers together at NYSEG Stadium in Binghamton. Brian was the Binghamton Mets beat reporter for the Press & Sun-Bulletin, and Evan (an intern at the paper) was covering the team for Scout.com. 

This week, Brian and Evan — who now covers the Red Sox for NBC Sports Boston and who’s been a big-league baseball beat reporter for 10 years — reminisce about those days watching Jose Coronado and Fernando Martinez. They remember their late editor, Charlie Jaworski, and how they still hear Jaws’ voice in their heads. 

Evan, a graduate of Binghamton University, discusses how keeping covering a high-school football game is the hardest thing to do in sports journalism. He talks about his career path from New York to Boston to Houston and back to Boston and what it’s like to cover the Red Sox. Evan and Brian talk about why the sports media world is so fascinated with Boston sports media, which leads into a bigger discussion about the role of analysis in beat writing and how all news judgment is editorializing. 

Evan Drellich on Twitter

The Big 50: Boston Red Sox: The Men and Moments that Made the Boston Red Sox

Jose Coronado on Baseball Reference

El centro y el corazón: Alex Cora went home to Puerto Rico to prepare for his first season as Red Sox manager

How Russia could steal the midterms

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Jen McCaffrey just started a new job. After covering the Boston Red Sox for several seasons for MassLive, she has recently started covering the team for The Athletic’s new site in Boston. 

Jen tells Brian why she made that move and details her career path from student at Syracuse University to her new gig, and how working on Cape Cod and in Philadelphia prepared her for her new gig. 

Jen talks about life on the Red Sox beat and what it’s really like to be a baseball beat reporter. She talks about bringing the laptop to the bar and writing stories while hanging out with friends, about how an interview with Dave Dombrowski interrupted her half-marathon training, and how that first year on the beat is just about keeping your head above water. Jen discusses what it’s like to cover the Red Sox, what makes that beat unique, and how she turns all of the waiting you do as a baseball writer into a positive. 

She also breaks Brian’s heart and admits that she doesn’t use the Comm Law he helped teach her at Syracuse very much — even though she did keep the textbook. 

Jen McCaffrey on Twitter

The Athletic: Boston

Jennings: Red Sox aiming to make analytics-based positioning simple for infielders

A father’s pride: Watching my daughter find her strength in a Southern California pool

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Lindsay Boyle has been a journalist in Ghana, and she has also reported on immigration and the option crisis in Southeastern Connecticut. She joins Brian this week to talk about her work and her career.

Lindsay, a graduate of Ohio University, talks about her day-to-day life as a breaking news reporter for The Day. She describes the entire process of breaking news, from how she finds out about news to her reporting and writing process. Lindsay talks about how she tries to balance reporting on breaking news and reporting longer stories. She also talks about why she started writing about immigration issues and how she decompresses after writing about such heavy issues all day. 

Lindsay also tells Brian about the three months she spent as a journalist in Ghana, what reporting was like there, and how that experience informs her worldview to this day. 

There is also talk on Hamilton and Cleveland sports. 

Lindsay Boyle on Twitter

Lindsay at The Day

Lindsay Boyle on Weebly

Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Don’t forget: Sister Jean is more than just a meme

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