A Sports Legend’s Second Act

0:04Congratulations, you made the varsity of the podcast. My name is John Aranda and I'm Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, the great Sally Jenkins joins the pod. Sally is simply one of the greatest sports columnists of the past quarter century. Sally shocked the business last week when she announced that she was accepting Jeff Bezos' buyout and leaving the Washington Post for the Atlantic. Her loss to the Post's sports staff is immeasurable. She started writing for the paper back in 1984, so we're going to do a deep dive into why she left and how she sees the future of the paper.

0:44But don't worry, we're also going to hit some of the stories that we'll both be covering over the next few years. Belichick, Liv Goff, John McEnroe. And because of Sally Jenkins, I have to ask her about her dad, the legendary sports writer Dan Jenkins. But before I get to Sally, today is Sunday, August 3rd, and here's what I'm watching. I'm particularly interested in Fox's decision to spend$125 million to buy a one-third stake in Penske Entertainment. That's the group that owns IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The idea of media companies trying to own sports is hardly new. I mean, way back in the 1990s, ESPN launched the X Games as a way to own its own programming.

1:31Same story with the first iteration of the XFL. Remember Dick Ebersole and NBC, the own part of that league when it launched back in 2000, 2001 sort of era? My sense is that this is just the beginning for Fox. It's not like the company is going to turn into a private equity firm that invests in sports, but I can see it taking more major investment swings. All major network groups know that renting properties is not as fun as owning them. I mean, look no further than the NBA. Turner Sports spent decades helping to grow that league to the point to where it got priced out of the market. it. Fox already has a couple of interesting deals that have the same look and feel as their new Penske one.

2:15It's the majority owner of the Big Ten network alongside the Big Ten conference and controls that conference's media rights. And what's especially interesting about that to me is that Fox doesn't keep all the Big Ten games for itself. They're spread around three different networks. Fox, NBC has a package, CBS has a package. As part owner in BTN, Fox wants to make money on the rights too. It's the same story with the UFL. That's the Spring Football League that merged the USFL and the XFL together. Fox holds a stake in the league alongside Redbird Capital, The Rock, Danny Garcia, but you can see UFL games on non-Fox channels.

2:57ESPN properties carry them as well. So yes, this is a long time trend, but I really do expect to see more of this. As the market for sports rights continues to change, media companies are going to crave certainty. And the surest way to achieve that is by figuring out how to actually own the content. Okay, now let's get to Sally Jenkins. so sally when i think about the washington post i think about you i mean you you were there uh in the early days my formative years of of of reading it uh you've been there for the past 25 years um i've seen a lot of people come a lot of people go this felt to me a lot like you know the the end of the aughts when, uh, when Tony and Mike, uh, ended up, ended up leaving.

3:50Um, before we get into sort of like your reasons, uh, for, for doing it, I don't want to sound, come off like a pop psychiatrist here, but like, what are your emotions like? I mean, you, you bleed the Washington post, I would think. I do. And I'm wrung out. I mean, um, I've, I've done a lot of weeping, you know, I don't mind saying I don't strike people as the weepy sort, but I have been this week for sure. I went to work there. It's actually 30 years, all told. I went to work there as a real kid in 1984. I was 24 years old. I remember you covered. I went to Maryland and you were covering the Lent Bias.

4:26You got a bunch of bylines on that. I recall that very well. Yeah. Found the cocaine in the car, actually. Good little piece of shoe leather reporting. Wait, you found the cocaine in the car? Yeah, yeah, yeah. His car, there was a car, Brian Tribble's car was parked by the dorm and we could see some rock cocaine laying on the passenger side. And it was, the cops came and got it and took a big rock out from behind the glove compartment. Did you know what it was at the time? Oh, we figured, yeah. How did I not know this? I know everything about the Olympia story. I didn't realize that. Yeah, I mean, that was like in the first 24 hours of reporting.

5:05But yeah, I was 24. I was actually, the first beat I had, I was covering Navy and Virginia football. And I got very lucky because Navy at the time featured a running back named Napoleon McCallum. And also a freshman on the basketball team named David Robinson. So I got off to a very fast start. Who was a coach at Navy at that time? Paul Evans was the basketball coach. And the Navy football coach, I'm going to struggle. uh george welch was the virginia coach virginia and terry holland of course right yeah yeah but i'm going to struggle to remember who was the the football coach i just remember napoleon mccallum i interviewed him and uh he you know of course he was an nfl caliber talent but he had his service commitment to fulfill he gave me a great quote he said can't they just buy you know can't can't i just buy him a missile or something and uh the quote it was a wonderful quote in the story but Apparently, the Academy was not enchanted.

6:06He got in a little trouble. In fact, that was back in the day when, didn't they make a poor David Robinson, like seven foot David Robinson get on like a submarine for a year or something like that? Yeah, he had to get on a ship. I don't remember if it was a submarine, but absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. They both had to do their service commitment. I love covering that school. It was great. It was great. I understand why Bill Belichick loves it so much. Your decision to leave the Washington Post certainly was not a rash decision. What did you consider? Why are you making this move? You know, I didn't consider it.

6:40The funny thing is, I think they offered the package, I forget when, maybe the end of May. I didn't even open the damn thing until two weeks ago. I didn't even look at it because I thought there's no living way. I'm leaving the Washington Post. There's just not a chance. I want to hang up my spurs there. And then a friend scolded me and said, look, you're at an age, I'm 64 and a half, 64 and three quarters. She said, you know, you're stupid. You need to read it. You need to understand it. You need to go over the financials. And this is probably your last chance, you know, to make a chunk of money.

7:21And so then I finally did open it and looked at it. and uh you know i thought about i mean i didn't want to quit working i didn't want to retire and i thought well if i were to take the package if i were to leave the post where else would you want to go and it was honestly a very very short list i mean a very short list i mean there's no disrespect to the new york times but i'd spent 40 years viewing the new york times or 30 years viewing the new york times as the competition you know um so i didn't want to go there i didn't want to go to Broville at ESPN. I'd done some work for them and have a lot of friends there and respect them too, but it didn't feel like the right fit.

8:02And the Atlantic Monthly was really the only place. I also liked the Free Press very much, Barry Weiss's publication, the Free Press, because they swing away over there and they're mavericks, and I liked that. But the maturity of the of the atlantic and the history of the atlantic and uh jeffrey goldberg you know is really the the great newspaper well not newspaper but the great editor journalist of his generation right now i think um with marty baron retired and uh uh i i've that place that was the one place i thought i could go and they offered you know it was a perfect storm by the way espn as broville That's why people love you.

8:48Well, they are. They don't. I mean, surely they don't deny it. I mean, come on. I think they would probably say Fox is more Broville than that. It might. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Okay. So we all depend on friends like you had that call you out. You open it up. And then what did you do? Did you call Barry Weiss? And did you call the Atlantic and set that up to see? No, I'm not that bold. No, I'm not that bold. No, I opened the package. I looked at the amount. I dipped a toe in a very cold and vast ocean and talked to a friend at the Atlantic, an old colleague. There's a bunch of post people over there.

9:32And I figured they wouldn't either have the wherewithal or the interest. And I said, would they ever have any interest in a sports writer? Because it's not what they do. And they already had Jamel Hill and Mark Leibovich when he decides to write sports is magnificent. So I just didn't think it was a real possibility. And instead, my very informal one-sentence query to a friend resulted in like this very swift, huge chain of events where I got an email that said, Jeffrey Goldberg would like to meet you. And so I met him. And I mean, it was 48 hours later or something, I think they made an offer.

10:15And I thought they wouldn't offer. I thought, well, they'll offer me less money than I'm making because, you know, maybe they think they can get some merchandise cheap or something. And instead, they made a really handsome offer that was too good to turn down in combination with the package. I mean, the buyout package almost makes you have to leave because it's so generous. if you're my age, you know, if you're my age and you've got 30 years service there, the package was really, really large and was going to ensure a lot of extra security. Actually, I had no security. I've been a moron about money my whole life.

10:55And this friend of mine who's in finance really scolded me and said, for once in your life, try to make a smart financial decision. This one's going to be really important. You know, I don't even know how much I make. I had to look it up. more and about money. You perfectly described yourself as a journalist, Sally. We all are, right? We just want to keep our heads down and do our work and worry about the words. And we see numbers and we go, ah, you know. Yeah. I sent a Slack to our finance editor recently. I said, I have an embarrassingly naive question, too naive that I don't even want to ask here about my own personal finances.

11:29I think you know, I know you know that I'm a lifelong Washingtonian and my career is in journalism. I've always done this. And the Washington Post as a brand, I can't think of a more powerful brand in my personal life than the Washington Post. I grew up with it and I spent hours reading it through my formative years. When I lived over in London in the mid-90s before the internet, my brother used to send the hard copy of the paper to me, and I'd be reading it a week later. The past couple of months for me, it's hurt my soul, Sally. It's like you go on Politico and you see the number of posties that have taken off.

12:18how much did sort of the dysfunction or what appears to be dysfunction in the newsroom play into your decision to take off? Well, that's a complicated question because you can call it dysfunction in the newsroom or you can call it sort of a necessary reset. And look, the place has to get to the right size. We've been too heavy and too large. I mean, under previous administrations, there were these inexplicable hiring binges that actually none of us in the room could understand. We just got way too big. And I mean, there were layers upon layers of editors were added. And I mean, climate is an absolutely vital story, but I mean, we had a really big climate staff.

13:08And, you know, it just, you kind of knew two years ago, a price was going to have to be paid for that. And so, you know, I think the right sizing of the paper is tricky for the Washington Post, right? It has to be big enough to compete as a global newspaper, but it's got to control its cost because we've been losing money. And so there's a lot of sort of central industry problems that have nothing to do with dysfunction. They have to do with just basic internal problems that someone's got to try to get their hands around and solve. And so I don't judge the current administration as harshly as other people do just because, you know, I just feel like they've been dealing with a pretty difficult problem.

13:54How do you dismantle all this needless, over-heavy infrastructure without losing, you know, too much talent and yet control costs? I mean, look, that's a tough one, right? And we have to get younger. There's no question about the fact that people like Sam Fortier and Ava Wallace are much more natural on TikTok and in acquiring audiences on Instagram than I am. I mean, they are immersed in social media like Austrians are in skiing, right? I mean, they've just grown up in the snow. And I haven't. And we haven't. People our age haven't. And so, you know, the Post has to pivot to some screen-friendly social media platforms.

14:39And that's the right thing to do. The video is the right thing to do. Investing in audio is the right thing to do. And, you know, I wasn't going to sit around and tell the Washington Post, well, pay me, you know, multiple six figures to keep me under those circumstances. You know, I want what's best for the paper too. And I think they're headed in the right direction. I just think that it is complicated. They've got to get some coordination going. The dysfunction that I see is not the stuff that you read about from these media bloggers. First of all, this buyout is very, very generous. And yes, it's meaning that some people like me are walking away.

15:23But a lot of great people are staying. I mean, don't forget. I mean, Perry Stein is one of the great rising young reporters. Our sports section is the New York Yankees. I mean, look, we all thought that the sports section was done for when Kornheiser and Wilbon left, right? That was a tragedy. I did that. That felt like a funeral, right? Yeah. Felt like an absolute funeral. What's the Washington Post sports section going to do? Everyone forgets I was the number four columnist. I was the number four columnist behind Kornheiser, Wilbon, and Tom Boswell, right? This is a natural cycle is what I'm saying.

15:56I don't, I'm sad personally because I love my colleagues, but in terms of the profession itself, this is a very natural cycle. Wilbon and Kornheiser moved on and it allowed me to grow into a bigger columnist who had to stretch and address the top subjects of the day. You know, I had been kind of hiding behind them, you know, being the cute little independent film in the section. And with them gone, I had to grow into a bigger columnist who tackled the toughest subjects, right? Well, that's going to happen with Candace Buckner, who's brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Jerry Brewer was just a finalist for the Pulitzer.

16:37We've still got so much. Rows of great young reporters keep filling in the ranks. So if you did not have that friend that berated you to open that email, you would have been happy staying at the Post? I was going to hang up my spurs at the post really happily. I was really, really deeply committed to it. And in fact, was doing things and in meetings on Wednesday with the business side, trying to pitch ideas for how to use sports more commercially. And then the offer came Friday, Friday afternoon. What's today? Friday, a week ago. For the post sports section or for the post in general to move forward, if you were to develop its strategy, it is, it sounds like you've got to get into video.

17:24You've got to get into more social media. You've got to do things that we never learned in school, certainly. I mean, I had fun doing a couple of, I actually just in the last couple of weeks did a couple of Instagram social media videos that I had an absolute blast doing. And I think I was on my way to actually getting pretty good at that. You know, I like it too, embedding. I think we're going to be able to embed videos in columns so that if someone doesn't want to read your column and wants to hear you speak part of it, they'll be able to do that. You know, there's a million different ways to inform people and you can break news, you can reveal news, you can give them a 850 word column or you can give them a 90 second, you know, smart aleck video.

18:10as long as you're not compromising the information I think it's really interesting and cool I mean you know it's an opportunity to work through an industrial revolution and that's what I try to tell all the people at the post you know don't be downhearted and sad about this attack it collaboratively and creatively which is what I was trying to do literally until three days ago I will say this I see and I said this in my farewell memo I see a Washington Post I see a glimmer of a Washington Post that moves, that's got really creative video, that's got really innovative sound. There's a guy named Bishop Sands, an audio guy who I worked with on a story that I was just dazzled by.

18:52And I think the Post does need to invest in those people. And that means moving some money from people like me. I want the Post to survive and flourish. And I think their ideas are on the right track. The place where I see maybe a little dysfunction or a little disorganization or whatever you want to call it, I mean, I'm not deep on the inside, but I have talked to the business people and I actually have a nice relationship with William Lewis, although I don't have any insights. He doesn't share business plans with me or anything, but I'm friendly with him. What I would tell him if he asked me, which he hasn't, I would just say that the idea of riveting storytelling for all of America, which is their branding now, and a lot of what we do on the homepage are not yet in total alignment.

19:48I think you have about six rows of very hardcore war, immigration, you know, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, you know, cabinet stories and sports style and features, food, living, travel are all having to scramble for one smaller piece of real estate. And I would urge them to really look at that story mix and really try to make it more interesting every day, more appetizing for readers and for sponsors and advertisers on the homepage. Now, I don't know how much the homepage itself is going to be driving subscriptions, but it is your front window. I go there all the time. I have to scroll way down in order to get to the sports.

20:36Yeah. You really do go, or anything else, a good personality feature. I would like to see a homepage redesign or remake to really mix up, get the story mix and the story chemistry a lot better or more friendly to readers, of all types. The other thing is, you know, there's this big saying now in the industry, you know, we've got to meet the readers where they are, you know, and so we've got to go to TikTok and we've got to go to Instagram. And that is true, but we've also got to go where the, we have to go where we are not. And when I say that, I mean, we've surrendered whole areas of coverage for some reason.

21:15I think it happened back in the old days when we were a little fat and happy. And our great outdoors columnist, Angus Phillips, retired, and we never replaced him because it didn't seem like we needed to because we had all this NFL stuff and we had all the main beats and outdoors is where people are. I mean, it is a huge, huge field of fishermen and hunters and hikers and campers and they buy gear and they come with big advertising components and it's a gap, you know, and it's like, so let's get in there. Right. I've argued the same with religion coverage. You know, where are people? Well, they're in their faith-based communities, you know, and we're not in there that much.

22:05We should be in there, in there more, you know, so. And you get somebody like Angus Phillips too. I'm hardly a fisherman or I don't hunt, but I would read his columns. He, he, he just was a, he was a good writer well and now if you don't just have good writers i mean the most popular outdoorsman in america is a guy named steven ranella who happens to write like an angel but he's also one of the most popular guys on video um on on all the social media platforms his his his meat eater brand has huge followings on uh youtube tiktok instagram he's for a while was on the Outdoors channel. I think that's a big trend.

22:43Where are there big tranches of audiences where we're not? Instead of constantly looking at and trying to identify the habits of the people who are already coming to us, let's go out and find some big tranches of people who aren't looking at us necessarily because we don't really offer them something that's one of their main interests. And so that was my argument for expanding some kind of outdoors coverage or a franchise, even partnering with an outdoors franchise. Sally, let me take one quick break, and then I want to come back. I still have a couple more questions about you before we get into Belichick and McEnroe and all the fun stuff.

23:37All right, so you're going over to the Atlantic. What's your role over there? I'm anticipating that you're going to be doing pretty much exactly the same things that you did with the post. I'm going to be doing sports coverage about three to four times a month, depending on some seasons are a little more fallow. And so we're going to leave it flexible. But I'm going to be trying to write a column or an essay once a week. I'm going to some events. I need to work out with The Atlantic. I think we need to map out a bit of a schedule on that. But also, Jeff Goldberg really wants to be doing deep features, which is one of the main draws for me.

24:15I mean, I love the long feature work like the Chris and Martina, Chris Everett, Martina Navratilova story I did. And I've done quite a lot of feature writing outside of sports, and I'd really like to stretch on that. And Jeff Goldberg is very interested in letting me do that. I'm going to be doing some deep feature work outside of sports, a little further afield. Do you sense that your style is going to change at all? Do you feel like you have a style? Well, I mean, so a column is different from a feature. your style differs in with the form i think um you know uh it's like running like a column is a is a sprint you know it's it's 800 to a thousand words and it's got to be tightly constructed whereas with a feature you can really meander around a lot you know as long as you're drawing the reader along with you but in both cases you're trying to put the reader on a on a toe path you're trying to put them on a uh you know a moving sidewalk that's moving them along whether they like it or not, you know?

25:14And so I'm just, my main style is to try to get them to the next paragraph, you know? But, you know, I think honesty, I think I'm known for, I'm a pretty candid columnist. I would think I'm known for taking on, for not caring how big the target is or how powerful the subject is and taking them on in a very candid way. You know, people say I can be really tough as a columnist and you know i i don't like that word i think i just hope i'm really really honest and i think the honesty can come off tough um but it it's hopefully it's honest and uh i mean it's like harry truman you know well harry you know harry truman said i don't give them hell i just tell the truth and they think it's hell so you you had a uh column eviscerating john mackinroe which nobody else had really written i certainly hadn't written i cover sports media because of the, you know, and I talked to those TV executives that you referenced, but everything you wrote, it sort of rang through to me.

26:18So it's almost like, you know, it isn't like saying something that's out there that other people aren't saying in a certain sense. Well, I mean, there are subjects that lay there in plain sight and people are afraid to say them because it's a sacred cow. And this is something that I know everyone in the industry has thought about John McEnroe for quite a long time. I mean, I sit around talking to myself at home, watching a match, you know, it's everybody who watches tennis would say to me, God, you know, oh, why doesn't McEnroe, like, can't he even learn the players' names? You know, that kind of thing, you know, regular fans who just know me, my friends would say, what is up with McEnroe not being able to pronounce somebody's name?

26:55And anyway, look, I didn't eviscerate him, I hope, I think I just made fun of him. Yeah. Which, you know, I mean, that's, if you ask me my style, my style is to sort of shame people with mockery rather than, you know, eviscerate them. I think it's more of a shoulder, you know, provoking a shoulder curl, pour a little salt on them, you know. I was using my social media word there. It was more of poking fun. Hey, listen, hey, if my column is the worst part, John McEnroe, he's won eight Grand Slam titles. He's worth God knows how much money. He's got homes everywhere. He's got great kids. If I am the worst part of John McEnroe's day, that is a really good day.

27:38I can imagine that he reached out to you. Sally, Sally. No, I haven't heard from him. I've tagged him a time or two before. And look, I respect him as a, like, Lord knows he's a genius of a tennis player and he was a very good broadcaster. I actually really enjoyed him early on. I just think he stopped working at it quite so much. How did that story idea come to you? Jesse, you just were talking to other tennis friends or you just noticed it yourself while watching the coverage? the coverage. I just noticed it myself watching the coverage and I heard it, heard it from my friends watching the coverage and, uh, you know, finally decided to do something about it.

28:20Um, you know, I don't know. It's funny. Stephen King, you know, the, the thriller writer, the horror writer, Stephen King, the New Yorker asked him once, where do you get your ideas? And he said, the little men in the basement. and that really is how it works you know some some little man just creeps up on your shoulder and whispers in your ear why don't you why don't you go after mackinroe someone needs to you know tell mackinroe to work harder you know that kind of thing i gotta ask you about you you referenced him already today one of the stories that i can't wait to follow this fall is bill belichick down in north carolina what are some of the storylines that you're going to be looking at with regards to how he does.

29:02It's going to be fascinating because what a feeding frenzy either way, right? Either he gets them in shape to win a few games and it's a really sort of interesting dynamic story about, you know, pro coach finds redemption, becoming father Flanagan to these college boys, you know, or it's going to be a tough season and it's, you know, Belichick really is past it. And not only that, but he's gone a little cuckoo and one of the storylines will be, well, Belichick can't make his method work in college. It doesn't belong in college and he's the wrong guy for college. Either way, there's going to be sort of this giant kind of fixed narrative.