Q&A: The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch on ‘The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2023’

Starting in 1991, a staple in the home libraries of sports journalists and sports fans has been “The Best American Sports Writing.” The book series is a collection of the couple of dozen or so best sports stories of the year.

It was edited for two decades by series founder Glenn Stout along with a new guest editor each year. The guest editors included legends in sports journalism, such as David Halberstam, Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins, George Plimpton, Dick Schaap and Sally Jenkins.

But, in 2020, the series morphed into “The Year’s Best Sports Writing.”

Now Triumph Books is out this week with the “The Year's Best Sports Writing 2023.” It was edited by Richard Deitsch, the well-respected media writer for The Athletic and former staffer at Sports Illustrated. This year’s collection includes work from The New Yorker’s David Remnick, The Washington Post’s Jerry Brewer and the late Grant Wahl.

It also includes work not only from traditional sports outlets such as ESPN and The Athletic, but also from places such as The Atavist and Texas Monthly.

I exchanged emails with Deitsch this week about his work on this year’s best sports writing book.

Tom Jones: Coming up with the best stories of the year for any topic just seems overwhelming. Can you take us a little behind the process of how you were able to put this collection together?

Richard Deitsch: It is overwhelming. But let’s also be realistic: I was being paid to read great writing and reporting. That’s a pretty sweet gig.

The most important thing that I did was to panel an advisory board that could protect me from any reading blind spots. I wanted a group of contributors who looked different from me, thought differently than I did. Each of their lists of story picks was distinctive, which was immensely helpful. I asked them to send me the 25-30 most impactful sports journalism pieces they read that year.

The group, with more than a century of sports journalism experience among them, consisted of J.A. Adande, Paola Boivin, Gregory Lee Jr., Jane McManus, Iliana Limón Romero and Shalise Manza Young. Glenn Stout, the longtime steward of this project, was an invaluable resource in answering the many questions I had.

The process is as you might expect. You read everything you possibly can including author submissions. You stay current on people who are consistently doing great work. And you pray you did not miss something. It’s months of reading and making lists.

Jones: There is so much incredible work out there. What were you looking for? What separated these stories from the rest? What makes these the best of the best?

Deitsch: The nightmare is the actual selection process. There was extraordinary work done in 2022, and culling it into a final group proved excruciating. The entries in the Honorable Mention section could easily form multiple main collections.

I read the essays of previous guest editors and found their rationales for selecting entries to be remarkable and thorough. Mine was more elementary: Which pieces stayed with me days after I let them go? Which pieces reflected who we were in sports in 2022? Which pieces demanded I read them again and again? I don’t look at any pieces as best. It's all subjective.

Jones: Past “Best Sports Writing” books often were filled with flowery, long-form features from the usual long-form outlets, especially magazines. As a former sports writer myself, I respected those stories, but I also look for the backbone of sports writing — deadline or quick turnaround newspaper stories or deep investigative pieces. This book includes such stories. How important was it for you to include some of those kinds of stories in this collection? 

Deitsch: It was important to me to get a mix of stories and particularly some pieces that were written on a quick turnaround deadline. I think the book can naturally favor long-form so I wanted some investigative journalism as well as some pieces we might think of as a game story.

Jones: Is there one story that is a personal favorite of yours?

Deitsch: I don’t have a favorite but something that was very important to me was to honor the work of the late Grant Wahl and another gifted writer who was cruelly taken away from us in 2022, Jonathan Tjarks of The Ringer.

Jones: Finally, what was this project like for you personally — what did you learn? Were you surprised by anything?

Deitsch: I had self-doubt accepting the assignment because previous iterations of this collection have featured writers of thunderous prose and relentless reporting drive. I am glad I overcame that.

The project confirmed what I already knew — there is so much brilliant writing and reporting in the space. What I fear, as I know you write about often, is that such talented people will move to other professions because the media ecosystem will not provide them with the income they need to do this work. But we’ve never lived in an age with more great sports writing talent.

My thanks to Richard Deitsch for sharing his thoughts, and now onto the rest of today’s newsletter … 

McCarthy out as speaker

As expected — yet still somehow shocking — Kevin McCarthy is out as speaker of the House. The New York Times’ Catie Edmondson wrote it’s a “move without precedent in modern history that left the chamber without a leader and plunged it into chaos.”

A group of hard-line Republicans voted to oust McCarthy and no one on the Democratic side of the aisle offered McCarthy a lifeline. In fact, it might have been McCarthy’s critical remarks on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” on CBS that ruined any chance of him being bailed out by Democrats. His appearance on the Sunday morning show came a day after Democrats helped McCarthy keep the government from shutting down for at least 45 more days.

There are reports that Democrats watched this clip before meeting Tuesday ahead of the vote. According to The Washington Post, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California showed the “Face the Nation” clip. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia told the Post that Democrats in the meeting were “outraged” and that “(McCarthy’s) performance was a very clarifying event for Democrats.”

Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina told CNN’s Annie Grayer, “For McCarthy to go on TV the next day and saying to all the media that the Democrats did this, the Democrats did that, that it was all our fault — Democrats brought the majority of the votes by a wide margin and for him to discredit everything that Democrats have done. Everybody got very upset.”

CNN’s Dana Bash said on air, “It’s not just run-of-the-mill partisanship. It’s the fact that he went on television after they saved his bacon and helped —  because Republicans weren’t going to keep the government … open. Democrats did.”

During CBS News’ coverage, anchor Norah O’Donnell said, “I do not know about the rest of you, but I just got the chills. The House of Representatives serves a very important function as a representative body in a democracy. … Now the speaker of the House — who is second in line to the presidency — that office is now vacant.”

CBS chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes said, “This is a very serious situation that the government is set to run out of funding again within 43 days. And as of right now, there is no speaker of the House who would make any kind of an agreement with the Senate or the president and there is no telling who the speaker will be or when they will be seated. There is a major power vacuum all of a sudden in the House of Representatives.”

Campbell Brown is leaving Meta

Campbell Brown, the former TV journalist who led Meta’s jump into news, is leaving the company. Axios’ Sara Fischer broke the story. According to a memo acquired by Fischer, Brown says she is stepping down from her current role leading Meta’s media partnerships later this fall, but will “remain affiliated with Meta in a new consultant capacity.”

Brown joined Facebook in 2017 to lead its inaugural news partnerships team. As The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin and Mike Isaac described it, “When Facebook was being battered in 2017 for distributing false and misleading news, the social network turned to Campbell Brown, a veteran journalist, to smooth over its relationships with the media.”

Before joining then-Facebook, Brown worked at CNN and NBC News.

Brown’s departure seems to indicate that Meta cares less about its relationships with the news media.

Mullin and Isaac wrote, “Her exit will leave Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — without one of its highest-profile representatives to news, sports and entertainment at a critical time. The opening acts of the 2024 U.S. presidential election are underway, and Meta’s role as a purveyor of voter information is sure to receive scrutiny.”

Media news, links and tidbits

• Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Nicholas Casey with “Telling the Truth About Mexico, and Dying for It.”
• NBC News’ Ben Collins with “What was Elon Musk’s strategy for Twitter?”
• Watch this clip of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow blasting away at “both sides-ism” when it comes to the political parties in the U.S.
• NPR TV critic Eric Deggans with “Late night TV is back! We rank their first episodes.”
• The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi with “Who can a showbiz reporter interview when Hollywood is on strike?”
• The New York Times’ Kevin Draper and Amelia Nierenberg with “How Dave Portnoy Used Barstool Belligerence to Build a Pizza Empire.”
• Mediaite’s Ahmad Austin Jr. with “ESPN’s Malika Andrews Reveals Terrifying Threats from Man Who Allegedly Targeted Her, Stephen A. Smith, and Molly Qerim.”
• For Nieman Lab, Sophie Culpepper with “Aiming for 500,000 subscribers by 2026, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes a big swing on growth.”
• Amy Fiscus has been named deputy national editor of The Washington Post. She comes to the Post from The New York Times, where she was deputy editor of the daily newsletter “The Morning.” The Post says Fiscus will “oversee the teams covering politics, democracy, America, national security, justice and immigration, health and science and visual enterprise, as well as the 202 newsletters.”

More resources for journalists

• Poynter will present Anderson Cooper with its Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism at the Bowtie Ball in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 18. Get tickets to join the celebration.
• Lead With Influence (Nov. 6-27) (Online Seminar) — Apply by Oct. 13.
• Poynter’s Beat Academy (Webinar series) — Enroll now.
• Poynter ACES Introductory Certificate in Editing (Online) — Enroll now.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].