Where are Today’s Athlete Journalists?

In my research for a recent article about my favorite journalists of the 20^th century, I encountered a pattern I didn’t expect to find: a good number of them were accomplished athletes. Jack Kerouac. Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer. David Foster Wallace. William F. Buckley. Tom Wolfe (yes, even dapper Tom). Since that discovery I have become increasingly convinced that one of the reasons journalism—on both the left and the right—is now so awful and dull is because today’s journalists are no longer former athletes. Indeed, most of them seem to have been the losers that got picked last for the team or who squirrel away at Ivy League schools to study social justice.