Results tagged “Sportswriters” from The Sports Desk

I'm looking forward to reading Scott Wolf's column in today's paper. Scott writes about why he put USC only No. 3 in the ranking he submitted to the Associated Press pollsters after the Trojans' blowout victory over Ohio State on Saturday. Scott is one of three AP voters -- on a 64-member panel -- who don't have the Trojans No. 1 in the nation.

Marc Berman, who covers the Knicks for the New York Post, observes in his Knicks blog that sportswriters in Boston's two major newspapers were unanimous in picking the Celtics to beat the Lakers. This is unremarkable, since writers do tend to hear more from the hometown team and often are swayed by its optimism.

But this should make us all appreciate our own columnist Steve Dilbeck and the steely objectivity he displayed in his NBA Finals prediction column. Dilbeck picked the Celtics to win, even though that's not what most readers here wanted to hear.

Read on for Berman's complete blog item.

One in an occasional series about the people behind the Los Angeles Newspaper Group's sports bylines:

When Elliott Teaford began his first season on the Lakers beat for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, he had no idea it would still be going and hitting its dramatic peak here in June. Teaford, 46, who was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Philadelphia, has spent his entire sportswriting career in Southern California and has covered high school sports, major-league baseball and hockey as well as basketball. But he says none of those experiences matched this one, on which he been on the scene practically every day watching the Lakers rise from the controversy of last summer to the NBA Finals that open Thursday in Boston. Elliott is used to asking the questions, not answering them. But he had some interesting thoughts when I posed some questions to him on-line ...

Jerry Brewer of The Seattle Times has a column (which you can read by clicking here) about the perception that sportswriters are too negative.

There's a great gap between perception and reality on that subject, Brewer writes. To put it simply, most sportswriters aren't predisposed to highlighting the bad. We are critical thinkers who analyze the news, and in general, our tone in stories and columns is a reflection of a team's performance. We like good news, too. We like writing about winning. The players are friendlier. The stories have more personality. But when bad things happen to good athletes, we don't ignore the train wreck.

Now, my thoughts on the subject.