Categories: OLD Media Moves

How Hunter S. Thompson encouraged someone to cover sports business

Bill Shea, one of the new sports business reporters at The Athletic, writes about how he first became interested in the business of sports.

Shea writes, “How did I get to this point?

“My passion for the business side of sports was born when I was in college in the early 1990s and somehow came into possession of the Feb. 28, 1974, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The cover story was Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo coverage of Super Bowl VIII between the Miami Dolphins and the Minnesota Vikings. It’s kinetic, brilliant, theatrical writing that I’ve returned to over the years for inspiration and laughs, but what caught my attention as a college kid was the depth Thompson and another writer went into about free agency, salaries, Super Bowl TV commercial ad rates, profits and other business aspects of pro football.

“It was a new type of context for the touchdowns and fumbles.

“Sports business journalism was almost unheard of then and largely remained a niche topic for decades.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.