Is St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bernie Miklasz the Last Great Local Sports Columnist?

Posted Jul 10, 2008 8:59AM By Michael David Smith (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Rams

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Robert Weintraub has a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review that laments the disappearance of great local sports columnists, and while Weintraub refers to well-crafted columns about the local sports team as a "dying art," as I read the piece I kept thinking of the way Tony Kornheiser described newspapers: "Not dying, dead."

Show me the highest-profile sports columnist in almost any American city and I'll show you someone who only considers the column a secondary gig to more lucrative opportunities on TV. I don't begrudge columnists like Kornheiser their decisions to quit working as a columnist to become a TV commentator, but I do wish more American cities had big-time local sports columnists who considered the column job one.

And then it occurred to me that there may be just one such columnist: Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He's the only guy I can think of who is the best and most prominent sports columnist in his city who hasn't turned the column into his secondary occupation.

There are other good local sports columnists who haven't made the move to TV, like Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times and Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star, but Couch and Posnanski both work at papers where there's a more famous sports columnist who frequently appears on TV. Miklasz is both great at the columnist craft and, apparently, happy to make writing a newspaper column his top job. If he ever stops writing to make Around the Horn his top priority, we can officially declare the great local sports columnist dead.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-10-2008 @ 9:33AM

petejayhawk said...

Posnanski is somehow diminished as a columnist because his paycheck is signed by the same person that signs Whitlock's?

That's some tortured logic there, MDS.

7-10-2008 @ 9:35AM

PS: I understand what you are trying to say - that Posnanski isn't the highest-profile columnist at the Star. But that doesn't mean he isn't the best, and a pure newspaper man to boot.

7-10-2008 @ 10:06AM

JAlper said...

Like Pete I get your point about Whitlock overshadowing Posnanski but, again like Pete, I think he's so overwhelmingly the best writer at that paper that he isn't diminished because of it.

7-10-2008 @ 10:51AM

Wade said...

Just echoing what has already been stated. How does the fact that Whitlock writes for the Star make Posnanski less of a great sports columnist? He has gone out of his way to make his written work his top priority. No doubt that Miklasz is a great writer and does an outstanding job, but to DQ JoePo seems ridiculous.

7-10-2008 @ 12:06PM

chitown chick said...

Joe Posnanski is an icon, and has publicly eschewed taking the opportunities to go national. Sorry, MDS, but saying he's not the best because of Whitlock makes absolutely no sense. I have nothing against Miklasz, but he doesn't hold a candle to Posnanski.

7-10-2008 @ 1:29PM

bshult said...

Last great? Would have to mean he was at some point great. Small-timer, typical mouthbreather sports scribe. To put in context, read the columns and the story angles of commonly recognized great sports columnists of the past.

Either he gets it wrong or writes something not noteworthy compared to others. Not too smart or compelling here. And a small-towner at that.

7-10-2008 @ 3:26PM

Andy said...

JoPo is the best sports columnist in the biz. Who cares if he works with Whitlock? Plus, Whitlock's always a heartbeat away from be arrested for being black, right MDS?