Favorite Journalists/Reporters?

[downtown]

So I'm reading this absolutely awesome book right now called The New New Journalism which is this sort of half literary criticism half Inside The Actor's Studio business for about a dozen more contemporary longform journalism/literary nonfiction types...asking about their reporting methods, their moral codes, "how we can find truth", blah blah.

Some of these guys I've been following for a while and have really liked, others are new to me...and that's got me thinking, since this group probably consumes a TON of media...who are some of your favorite reporters/writers? These can be people on a regular beat, people who just do features, maybe even people who primarily do books?

One of my favorites is Michael Lewis, who does write articles, but it probably best known for his book work...Moneyball, his look at the way the Oakland Athletics Baseball team tried to approach unappreciated assets to win games without any money is probably the most popular (and one of the best sport's books ever). I think actually liked Liar's Poker the best, his first book which explained the rise and fall of Solomon Brothers. Nobody I know can write about complicated financial stories and make them as interesting as Lewis.

I'm also a big fan of Wright Thompson and Bill Simmons at ESPN (for entirely different reasons), Spencer Hall at SB Nation (who I think has the strongest voice in sports journalism today, and maybe the funniest as well), and Lee Fang at the Nation (who has shown strong investigative chops).

Historically, I've very much enjoyed the work of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, who helped create Literary Journalism/Nonfiction as we know it.

Do you have any favorites? What makes somebody a favorite to you?

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Norman Gunston of course


Link to video.

 

[Ajidica]

Robert Fisk is pretty good for Middle East reporting.

 

[Masada]

Robert Fisk because of his consistent stand against the Zionists and Imperialists.

 

[Azale]

Off the top of my head, though some of these are arguably not journalists/reporters:

Chris Hayes (formerly of In These Times & The Nation, now TV host for MSNBC)
Bhaskar Sunkara (In These Times, Jacobin)
Seth Ackerman (Jacobin)
Connor Kilpatrick (Jacobin)
Curtis Melvin (NK Economy Watch blog)
Johnathan Cohn (The New Republic)
Ta-Nahisi Coates (The Atlantic)
Josh Barro (Business Insider)
Sarah Kliffe/Suzy Khimm/Dylan Matthews (Wonkblog team for the Washington Post)
Gary Brecher "The War Nerd" (NSFWCorp.com)
Forrest Wilder (Texas Observer)
Melissa del Bosque (Texas Observer)
Matthew Bruenig (Demos)
Andrew McNeil (48MinutesofHell.com)

We need a least favorites list too.

 

[classical_hero]

Robert Fisk is pretty good for Middle East reporting.

yes such a great reporter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14390301

Saudi Arabia's interior minister has accepted undisclosed damages over an article in The Independent newspaper accusing him of ordering police to shoot and kill unarmed protesters.

The newspaper accepted the "order" it reported was in fact a fake.

Its publishers, Independent Print Ltd, also offered "sincere apologies" to Prince Nayef Bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud at London's High Court.

Prince Nayef has said he will give the "substantial" damages to charity.

The article was written by the Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who also offered his apologies, and published on 15 April.

He is so good that he lost a libel suit against him when he falsely put claims in against a Saudi Prince. That does seem to be the quality of journalism right now.

Again with this story.

Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb: Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
That was false according to numerous studies of the missiles used by Israel

Clearly this guy is not a journalist but a propaganda writer instead.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm struggling to find your point. Unless of course your point is that Fisk used what was thought to be a genuine order in an article and after it was found to be false he apologized and The Independent paid libel damages.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Didn't you realize that any journalist who takes a fair and even handed approach to the Middle East is a propagandist?

 

[peter grimes]

Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi come to mind first.

Also, Greg Palast (though to be honest I haven't seen much from him in the past few years)

I remember reading Michael Lewis' piece in the NYT Magazine about the Oakland A's, and even though I find sports immensely boring (sorry, DT!) I loved that article.

I thoroughly enjoy Natalie Angier's writing, but I've only read her science journalism.

Also, Carl Zimmer is great. Again, not journalism per se, but science writing.

 

[sophie]

Big fan of:

Johnathan Bernhardt of sportsonearth.com. The dude really knows his stuff; cites the right sabermetrics, and actually has interesting (non-generic) things to say about baseball and the MLB.

Grant Brisbee of baseballnation.com and mccoveychronicles.com Well versed in sabermetrics and wickedly funny. Great premises in well-written articles. I particularly like his series looking at franchise droughts at various positions.

Will Leitch of sportsonearth.com. He's one of those "I like all the sports" kind of guys, and that makes me wary, and understandably I don't think his articles on professional sports are anything really interesting. But his articles about sports on a more basic or conceptual lever are very good. His article on coaches in little league baseball and his article on sabermetrics for teeball were both wonderful, and I look forward to future installments of Leitch across America.

All the guys over at theclassical.org are excellent. I particularly like Michael Brendan Dougherty, who also publishes a newsletter called "The Slurve". Again a guy who cites the right sabermetrics and highlights interesting aspects of the sport.

Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes writes interesting articles periodically on baseball from a business perspective.

Most of the New York Times sports writers that aren't generic beat writers for the New York teams. This is kind of a catch all. NYT's beat articles are terrible and boring, necessarily so I suppose. The vast majority of long-form articles on specific subjects, however are excellent. They're well balanced and do a great job really telling you a lot about the athlete or the team in a relatively limited amount of space. Unfortunately these mainstream newspapers do not use advanced statistics and it really hurts them down the line analytically.

USA Today occasionally has good baseball articles. I may even go as far as saying their sports section is better than the NYT's. Whereas NYT's tend to focus more on the individual and the story, USA Today focuses more on the sport and competition, which is what I want. Periodically they'll write a longer-form article highlighting a baseball team and I like those. They give a great rundown on the state of the franchise and give you a great primer to what a typical fan of that franchise might be thinking right now. Again they don't use sabermetrics and their weekly power rankings are laughably bad.

I may add later for which sportscasters I like and do not like. While I try to read a lot of world news too (I used to read the New York Times every day at University because it was free and I was often bored at the dining hall, I usually focused more on the sports section because it's more interesting to me, so I don't know the rest of the sections very well.)

I will say that the New York Times' business section is absolutely good, brilliant stuff. Their art reporting, particularly of post impressionist and early modernist/abstract art is also very good.

 

[Kyriakos]

Sorry, could not resist:

As someone on another forum once said of Wolf Blitzer:

Wolf Blitzer? Brother of Dragon Sniper and good friend of Lion Rapist?

 

[peter grimes]

Sorry, could not resist:

As someone on another forum once said of Wolf Blitzer:

Wasn't Wolf Blitzer the lost brother of Solid Snake that we hear about in the cur scene after the first sniper mission?

 

[Smellincoffee]

The only journalists I know by name are those who have done books; Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness)springs most readily to mind.

 

[Left]

David Foster Wallace's reportage is better than his fiction.

Also, Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Zach Lowe is my fav. sportswriter

 

[Camikaze]

I don't mind hacks if they're skilled at wordsmithery. Jonathan Liew, for example, isn't fantastic on content, but can turn a mean phrase, so scores points for entertaining sports coverage.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I like Anderson Cooper.

 

[Berzerker]

jeremy scahill
rula jebreal (yummy)

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Ed Yong does science reporting right.

 

[downtown]

Connor Kilpatrick (Jacobin)
Josh Barro (Business Insider)

I don't get a chance to read a ton of their actual articles, but I can verify these two are solid twitter follows, if that means anything haha.

Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi come to mind first.

I totally forgot about Taibbi, he is awesome. What I really like about him is that like Lewis, he has the unique ability to report complicated financial news bring it to a reader in an approachable, and still interesting, manner. He's also very funny and pulls no punches. I'd be interesting in reading some of his pre-RS work.

Grant Brisbee of baseballnation.com and mccoveychronicles.com Well versed in sabermetrics and wickedly funny. Great premises in well-written articles. I particularly like his series looking at franchise droughts at various positions.

Brisbee IS pretty funny. I've been pleasantly surprised with how well Baseball Nation has gone. I think the individual team blogs in that space are a little more hit or miss than the rest of the network, but Baseball Nation is one of the stronger sites.

Will Leitch of sportsonearth.com. He's one of those "I like all the sports" kind of guys, and that makes me wary, and understandably I don't think his articles on professional sports are anything really interesting. But his articles about sports on a more basic or conceptual lever are very good. His article on coaches in little league baseball and his article on sabermetrics for teeball were both wonderful, and I look forward to future installments of Leitch across America.

I go back and forth on that guy a lot. I worry that he's falling into the great internet sportswriter trap of starting to write more for other internet sportswriters than for actual readers. He's also somebody that I suspect that maybe deep down, doesn't reeeally want to write about sports.

All the guys over at theclassical.org are excellent. I particularly like Michael Brendan Dougherty, who also publishes a newsletter called "The Slurve". Again a guy who cites the right sabermetrics and highlights interesting aspects of the sport.

I think The Classical has a higher "ceiling" than just about any other indie sports website. When it hits, it does *very well*.

Most of the New York Times sports writers that aren't generic beat writers for the New York teams. This is kind of a catch all. NYT's beat articles are terrible and boring, necessarily so I suppose.

Yeah, beat writer work is typically boring in general. I don't envy the guys who have to do it on my beat.

David Foster Wallace's reportage is better than his fiction.

Do people contest this? I think it's waaaaay better. Up Simba was one of the best political essays I've ever read.

Zach Lowe is my fav. sportswriter

I've grown to like Lowe a lot. I think he's a great foil for Simmons on his podcasts as well...he's a much better voice (and way smarter) than whatever moron friend or cousin Simmons brings on occasionally.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Didn't you realize that any journalist who takes a fair and even handed approach to the Middle East is a propagandist?

I wouldn't call Robert Fisk 'a propagandist', but nor would I call him 'fair and even handed'. He's a brave, determined, and very knowledgeable journalist, who's quite open about the moral and political agenda behind his writing, and who doesn't try to sell himself as some kind of impartial observer. Trying to present him as someone who acts as a beacon of neutrality is not just wrong, it's actually insulting to him. We need more journalists like that, and fewer who allow readers the conceit of thinking that the stories they choose to believe are 'fair and even handed'.