Death of the Sports Interview

Great points and thoughts in this column by Tim Keown.

http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/_/id/7319161/espn-death-sports-interview

 

Was this published in the newest ESPN The Magazine, which is The Interviee Issue?

 

The distance between fans and athletes has never been smaller thanks to Twitter.

"The death of the sports interview" hurts the media much more than the fans.

 

Chris Jones's backpage column touches on this topic, too, and I thought it was pretty great. Can't find it online yet, not sure if it will be at all, but it's worth at least picking up the mag if you see it in a store somewhere.

 

His columns appear on the dotcom's Commentary page.

espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/7318522/espn-magazine-twitter-facebook-fans-know-little-athletes

 

Ah, this explains Jones' tweets from Tuesday.

He had a few, all making the same point, including this one:

"LeBron James gave Charlie Pierce 15 minutes for an SI cover story. Mailer ran with Ali."

 

This is a big reason I soured on the profession. Everything is so insanely choreographed. No one tells you anything. A few times a year, I would get decent time with subjects for a piece. But mostly, it was gang-bang bullshit.

When I freelance from time to time now, I often get to interview real people about the interesting things they are doing. Just a couple of guys shooting the shit. It's blissful.

 

Well, that, and you couldn't wear your muscle shirts & flip flops anymore.

 

YF, could that disparity have something to do with the fact Ali is a profoundly interesting person and James is profoundly not? Fifteen minutes might be all he can handle in the self-revelation department.

 

I willing to admit, I'm not qualified to answer that question.

Maybe some others can weigh in on that one.

 

You're the man. Or the woman. I don't know. Sorry about that. My point is, you rock.

 

Brandon, you recently did an ESPN: The Magazine story that I enjoyed about a down-on-his-luck everyman basketball player from Chicago who seemed to give you plenty of time to learn his story.

That's the kind of freaking sports journalism I like to both read and, once upon a time and hopefully again some day, undertake.