The most influential sports journalist working today?

Don't know if its Rick Reilly who did a great job with Nothing but Nets, Tony Kornheiser? Mike Lupica?, but I was wondering which writers or broadcasters make the biggest (not loudest) impact on the sports world. Whose opinions or actions actually make a difference?

 

I'm not a big fan of his, but I would say John Feinstein because he can get a book on the best seller list all of the time. I think his impact might have a bigger effect when it gets past the sports media and past the print media. Here's the other thing - if you were to say, for example, Joe Buck, then I would say what if Fox decided not to employ Joe Buck. His influence would plummet immediately.

The other person who comes to my mind would be Sam Smith, because he seems to be at the top of the NBA writers.

 

There's really just a vacuum there since Rudy Martzke retired.

 

Bill Simmons [/Sarcasm]

Whoever said Feinstein is probably correct. He reaches people beyond just newspapers, the Web, TV, etc.

 

Hey, you could say that about John Madden, too. And he reaches that elusive young market and keeps them entertained...........But I'm just kidding. I think I'm kidding.

 

Jason Whitlock

 

Sadly Simmons is influential. At least in-house. Lots of young sports writers try to emulate that frat boy voice. In the same way that every MFA candidate in the country writes a clutch of rotten short stories in dismal imitation of Raymond Carver, there are plenty of novice journalists cranking out half-sassy copy that cross-references high school football and the Jetsons. The good ones go through it like a phase and put it behind them.

To a slightly better result, I think Gary Smith has been powerfully influential (again, among our tribe), and much imitated.

Across the broader culture, though, which working sports journalist (outside of broadcasting) has any profile at all? Albom?

 

Define influential. Do you mean whose had the most impact on our business? If that's the case, Simmons and Gary Smith would be right up there, because they've probably spawned the most imitators. If we're talking about the power to bring about change or affect decisions that are made in the sports world, I would say the answer is no one. There's not a single sports journalist who has that power. There are media outlets, like ESPN, that might fit that description, but no individual journalist.

And Joe Buck and John Madden are not sports journalists.

 

Stuart Scott

 

That's why I picked Feinstein. When I was in Indiana, everybody I knew owned Season on the Brink, regardless of whether or not they followed sports in general.

 

Speaking of Smith, in one of the Reilly stories I saw a passing reference to Smith that said he has a deal with SI to write three or four of his epic stories per year for $600,000.

If that's true, that's incredible money, any way you shake it out. And I know he spends a lot of time working the stories for that dough, but you would too if you could land such a deal. Here's one guy who has found a way to get past most of the headaches of daily/weekly publishing.

 

Yeah, I saw that too, it was in the New York Post. Three or four 10,000-word stories over the course of a year for $600,000 is a great deal.