Sports as saviour is everywhere. Everybody knows better at this point, it’s still so integrated into the way we process any kind of success, of any kind of athlete. It’s like, “Where is the sob story?”
I have followed and read Natalie Weiner from afar (but how else do you follow strangers on the internet, in a supportive and not menacing way, I am just now realizing) for some time. She’s covered a wide cross-section of sports, from the NFL to MLB to the WNBA, and all women’s sports, pointedly and well, and she doesn’t meander so much as hammer right at the heart of where sports and our observations of them fall short, where the business of them diminish or fail the human parts of them. If you haven’t listened to her Spinsters episode on the misconception people have about women not being able to dunk, please do that after you listen to this.
She also writes, really well, about music. (I did not get to ask her about her thoughts on the Percy Sledge cover of ‘Mama Tries’, my very bad).
Because she’s someone who covers so many things, all with their own nuance and timing and nuance of that timing, I wanted to talk to her about the rhythm of that work. Specifically, what are the resting beats between seasons for her, how she marks them, how they’ve been important periods of reflection, and what she thinks we might be losing in the shift over to the constant necessity for news, on all things (but certainly rumours and takes), 24/7. On that note, we also talked about whether she has to toggle her brain between different modes going between sports.
Plus, how writers should get better, and smarter, about the stories we choose to write and how, the total exodus of women from coaching roles in the NBA, and where regular stories get lost in favour of the more mythic ones.
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