Legendary Sports Illustrated editor tells Jeff Pearlman his methods

Jeff Pearlman, an author and freelance sportswriter who sometimes writes for Bleacher Report, does a weekly Q-and-A interview on his personal website “with a person from sports/entertainment/politics/whatever.” He calls it The Quaz. It’s often a great read.

This week’s Quaz is with Peter Carry, the longtime executive editor of Sports Illustrated, where Pearlman was a staff writer from 1996 to 2002. Pearlman writes that Carry was a legendary editor who “presided over the golden age of sports journalism,” starting at S.I. in 1964. A short, typed note from Carry praising a story, Pearlman writes, was all the sustenance a Sports Illustrated writer needed.

He asks his former boss about his approach to editing:

The most important work was done before the story was written, even before it was even assigned. Rule 1: The best ideas come from the guys in the field (and Lord knows whatever other sources outside your office), so listen. Refine. Combine. Bad ideas result in bad stories, no matter who’s doing the writing. Rule 2: Listen and talk to the writer. Don’t nag, don’t hang over her shoulder. But do have a discourse. Challenge. Help the writer refine the idea. Rule 3: Read the damn story all the way through before you lay a pencil or a cursor on it. This seems like a simple matter, like medical personnel always washing their hands before they touch a patient, but you’d be surprised how often patients and stories get prematurely handled. Rule 4: Be gentle but be firm.

I’ll let you read the rest of it. My favorite part is when Pearlman asks Carry what it was like to work at Sports Illustrated at it’s peak, and Carry begins his answer, “Do you watch Mad Men?”