Sports

Crying Foul

ESPN has grown into the biggest force in sports broadcasting. But John Ourand, a reporter with the Sports Business Journal, says other networks, the various sports leagues, and even advertisers believe that ESPN, in fact, does more harm than good.


Dem Bums

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the last game played by the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. Journalists Michael Shapiro, Neil J. Sullivan and Len Shapiro reflect on the days when Dem Bums left Brooklyn and headed west.


The Dope Beat

Almost every major sport is marred by scandal at the moment and many journalists are quick to discuss what the scandals' implications mean for the games. But Michael Hiltzik, Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist-turned-sportswriter, says more scrutiny should be paid to the allegations and those who make them.


Unsportsmanlike Conduct

The National Football League is defending and promoting its own media brand by issuing new rules that would seem to penalize reporters who are just doing their jobs. Running interference for the journalists is Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.


The Viral Sport

Surfing has films, skateboarding has VHS tapes, and parkour has the internet. After a few clips of David Belle leaping around the French suburbs made their way to the internet, a sport was accidentally born. New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson explains how parkour managed to be the first sport to go viral.

Our favorite Parkour clip.


Life Squared

The last weekend in March, at a Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut, the 29th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament was held. It was a record-breaking affair, with 500 contenders. We sent our producer Mike Vuolo to the event, because as a puzzle fanatic and a published puzzle constructor (a person who writes puzzles) he was desperate to go. He came back with this report.


Most Valuable Sayers

For 75 years, baseball's top honors - the Cy Young, Rookie-of-the-Year, and MVP - have been awarded by some of the game's foremost experts: newspaper sportswriters. But some editors are objecting to the practice, saying journalists should be covering the news, not creating it. Randy Harvey, sports editor at the Baltimore Sun, tells Brooke why his paper recently banned its staffers from voting on postseason awards.


Dropping the Ball

In her first tournament as a golf professional, 16-year-old sensation Michelle Wie finished fourth in the Samsung World Championship - that is, until a Sports Illustrated reporter turned her in to officials for breaking a rule. She was promptly disqualified. But didn't the reporter break the rules, too, by becoming a participant in a story he was meant to report? Bob speaks with Sports Illustrated editor Jim Herre about the rules in golf and journalism.


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