Wright Thompson in his own words: It’s not about the words

Wright Thompson of ESPN the Magazine is a great magazine sportswriter—or, to use the current term, which I don’t like, longform sportswriter.

Thompson talks about his career and craft as part of the Still No Cheering in the Press Box series at the University of Maryland journalism school’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. We talked about that series last year when it ran a profile of the sports columnist I grew up reading, Jim Murray.

This is Thompson “in his own words,” his answers to a pair of student interviewers, according to the series overview. It’s a bit ironic because it reads as if Thompson is rambling uninterrupted on a bar stool, bouncing from topic to topic. That’s the very opposite of Thompson the writer:

When you’re a kid you think writing has to do with words and then you figure out that it doesn’t and that it has to do with structure. It’s architecture. That’s the whole job. It has nothing to do with words, really. It’s outlining, structure, it’s conflict and resolution …

I go through notes, I outline and underline and I make note cards and reorganize the notes into like piles. And I cover walls of offices with post-it notes. I do whatever feels like is necessary to wrangle all of this information.

Pull up a barstool and listen.

See also

Wright Thompson of ESPN: Write “scenes”