The Sports Journalist Pablo Torre Has a Pulitzer, but Still Feels Like the “Turd” in the Pool
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The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The sports journalist Pablo Torre once described what he does as, quote, taking stupid things seriously. Now he's being kind of a smart ass, he certainly doesn't think sports are stupid, but he does take them very seriously.
In fact, Torre just won the Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting, and that's a feat because the number of Pulitzers given for sports journalism in any medium is tiny. He investigated a scheme by one NBA team to circumvent the salary cap. And that story aired on his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out. Now, that kind of work is hard to do. The industry of sports, the leagues, the team owners, the top players, none of them, none of them like it when a journalist asks too many questions.
Too much money is at stake. Torre got his start as a staff writer on Sports Illustrated in the twilight of that magazine's tremendous reach and influence, and he later became a familiar presence on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption as debate shows were replacing old-fashioned sports reporting. I got into the end and I could taste the exhaust pipes of what this great institution used to be. What if we argued instead of reported?
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