Sportswriters Leave Publications Behind

I had always heard from women who had worked at the magazine, my friend included, that the place was not exactly female friendly. Looking at the masthead, you'd have to wonder how a woman could have a female friend there at all, because there just weren't that many on the staff to begin with. Rather, more often than not the place was more akin to a boys-will-be-boys fraternity where several past editors even had memberships to exclusive all-male golf clubs.

In the latest edition of the magazine, among the top ten editors on the masthead, every one is of the male persuasion. Among the 26 senior writers -- the most glamorous, high-profile writing jobs at SI -- one woman is listed. Not until you get to the category of writer-reporters or reporters -- the lowest grunt scribes in the magazine, many of whom hardly ever get a byline -- at least there are eight women among the 20 staffers listed.

So maybe with the addition of Roberts -- surely she'll go in as the staff's second senior writer -- and perhaps more talented women to come, there's some hope for a little more gender equity in the SI ranks. Then again, this also is a magazine that, sadly, hardly covers any female sports in the first place, but does do a land-office business with its annual skin-deep swimsuit issue. So maybe Roberts will just be an exception, albeit a very welcome one, and that would be a great shame.

Now, back to the broadcast business.

Much to its credit, at least ESPN has made a serious effort to recruit women and minorities to its burgeoning electronic and print empires. And unlike its major network counterparts, which seem to believe a woman's place is literally on the sports sidelines, they man/woman meaningful positions as anchors, reporters and occasionally in the virtually all-male bastion of play-by-play announcing. ESPN even has an ombudswoman, former N.Y. Times sports editor Le Anne Schreiber, keeping her discerning eye on a network that's main demographic is men between 18 to 34.

Among all four network pre-game NFL shows, there's not a female on-air studio analyst in sight, unless you count Fox's Jillian (Barberie) Reynolds, who does game-day weather reports at NFL game sites. She's clearly on the set for all the wrong reasons, judging by her typically provocative attire. (This past Sunday, she wore a dress that seemed to be made of aluminum foil, prompting Howie Long to say that Terry Bradshaw wanted to wrap a sandwich with her).

But we digress.

The number of print reporters making a major impact in other mediums has never been higher. There's a great upside for all of them, if only because web sites and broadcasting companies have put them all in much higher tax brackets. The downside, of course, is that the shrinking newspaper business keeps losing the very good people who made their publications worth reading in the first place.

The best of the print-to-broadcast and occasional double-dipping crowd?

I've always been partial to the folks I used to bump into when they were all young and hungry newspaper beat writers, people like ESPN's Sal Paolantonio (Philadelphia Inquirer), Ed Werder (Dallas Morning News) and Chris Mortensen (Atlanta Journal Constitution). ESPN's Rachel Nichols, a former Post reporter, also has done fine work for ESPN, and so has Fox's baseball insider, Ken Rosenthal (Baltimore Sun), following in the giant footsteps of ESPN baseball juggernauts Buster Olney (N.Y. Times), Tim Kurkjian (Washington Star) and Peter Gammons (Boston Globe).

The best of the best?

My personal choice would be the double- and sometimes triple-dipping Peter King, the main NFL writer at Sports Illustrated who also is a regular on the smartest pro football highlight show on television (HBO's Inside The NFL), as well as the information man on NBC's Sunday night NFL pre-game show.