On Writing and Journalism: The World's Changing but the Basics Are the Same

Speaker: Dave Kindred, columnist and author

By Chelsea Accursi
2007 AWSM intern at the Salt Lake Tribune

Longtime sports journalist and author Dave Kindred said the biggest challenge to women sports journalists isn’t the attitude of the athletes but the men in the workplace.

Kindred, whose more than 30 years in sports journalism include six sports books, a weekly column in The Sporting News, jobs at The Washington Post, Louisville Courier-Journal, The National and The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and laying in bed with a naked Muhammad Ali, opened his speech by recognizing some of the female pioneers in the industry.

Kindred also shared his own experience in the business, admitting that at 26, in Louisville and covering high school basketball, he wanted to quit.

“Circulation was down, people were losing their jobs,” he said. “But (that feeling) faded and I decided I wanted to be a newspaper man.”

As for the trouble print journalism is facing now, Kindred could only say “The business is never going to go away.”

Without news, he said, we as humans cannot exist.

He doesn’t put the same high value on blogs.

“Most blogs seem like a waste of time,” he said. “Most of them look like they’re off the top of their head and there’s no reporting.”

His advice for sports journalists today: Tell the story. The biggest enemy to storytelling these days is online, Kindred said.

“It’s like a wire service,” he said. “There’s no time to tell the story. I wouldn’t want to do it, and it’s not fair to reporters to ask them to do it.”

Kindred ended his session with words of wisdom from Humphrey Bogart’s character Ed Hutcheson in the 1952 movie Deadline – U.S.A.

“About this wanting to be a reporter, don’t ever change your mind. It may not be the oldest profession, but it’s the best."

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