Michael Lewis on separating yourself from the pack as a writer

Michael Lewis

New York magazine has a long profile of “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side” author Michael Lewis, who at the moment is sort of the Albert Pujols of sportswriting, though he only writes about sports some of the time.

Lewis is so successful—he pulls down $10 a word for magazine pieces—that almost anything an aspiring writer learns about his methods can be useful, and the profile, by Jessica Pressler, has a lot about how Lewis does what he does.*

But one of his methods jumped out at me because it goes along with a couple of things we’ve talked about around here. One is the limitations of access. And here I have to point out again that access can be fabulous, it just comes with some limitations. Another is the importance of separating yourself from the pack.

Pressler quotes Lewis saying it’s amazing that the “Moneyball” story was available for him to write. “Billy Beane’s doing this thing that is totally original, under the noses of the mainstream media,” Lewis says in the piece. “That amazed me that opportunity existed.”

The piece continues:

Part of the reason, he came to realize, was the relationship between sports reporters and their subjects. “It is amazing how much contempt there is for the professional media that surrounds any given enterprise,” he says. “I find it all the time. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs think the tech journalists are all stupid. The sports people think that about the sports journalists. They don’t say that to the sports journalists, because they want the sports journalists to be nice to them. But the level of contempt is very high. You need to kind of cut through that,” he says. “You’ve got to be willing to not be a member of the tribe. Like, you can think what you think about journalists, but don’t put me in that category, because I’m not that.’”

Emphasis mine.

Lewis comes at his stories already separated from the pack. He’s a magazine writer or an author coming fresh to the subject, rather than one of the regulars on the beat.

But you can, and should, take his advice even if you’re one of the regulars on the beat: “You’ve got to be willing to not be a member of the tribe.” In everything you do, think about how you can separate yourself from that pack.

* * *

* It also, as an aside, has a bad definition of sabermetrics: “an arcane statistical method of evaluating players.” Sabermetrics isn’t an arcane statistical method, it’s merely the application of objective analysis to player evaluation. It’s the idea of using statistics, especially the most meaningful statistics, rather than things like gut feel. (Go back)