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Articles by Robert Weintraub | Email the Author
ESPN’s interchangeable women
To the Bristol brass, it’s the network, not the talent, that makes the star
By Robert Weintraub May 6, 2013 at 03:51 PM
In recent months, ESPN has taken a distinctly Bill Belichick-ian approach to its on-air talent, in particular its female announcers.... More
Room for two
New Yorker, Grantland go head to head on Iditarod coverage
By Robert Weintraub Apr 30, 2013 at 02:50 PM
Certainly a thousand-mile race across the vast empty expanse of the Alaskan wilderness has room for two massive, longform articles... More
TNT’s silly experiment
NBA game with no play-by-play guy? Um, maybe not.
By Robert Weintraub Apr 16, 2013 at 02:55 PM
Late last week, TNT tried an experiment on its weekly national NBA telecast. During the second game of its doubleheader,... More
No sweat on ESPN’s brow
Fox Sports 1 won’t be able to paint itself as the ‘fair and balanced’ alternative
By Robert Weintraub Mar 6, 2013 at 06:50 AM
Terry Bradshaw. Erin Andrews. Tim McCarver. Even Regis Philbin. All the stars in the Fox Sports galaxy gathered Tuesday afternoon... More
Towering babble
CBS Sports fumbles Super-Bowl power failure
By Robert Weintraub Feb 4, 2013 at 03:05 PM
The true test of a team or an athlete is how they perform in a crisis, when the game goes... More
X-treme denial
Why aren’t the player-safety concerns that dog the NFL an issue in ESPN’s X Games?
By Robert Weintraub Jan 31, 2013 at 10:10 AM
It's Super Bowl week, but the majority of talk from the pigskin chattering class revolved around football's existential nature, thanks... More
Being good isn’t enough
The sports media needed Manti Te’o to have a compelling back story
By Robert Weintraub Jan 17, 2013 at 04:53 PM
Just how much confirmation does a reporter require before going with a story? Can any source be trusted? If something... More
Tough guys
The press is complicit in the NFL’s ‘warrior mentality’
By Robert Weintraub Jan 11, 2013 at 01:22 PM
Last Sunday the Washington Redskins lost more than a playoff game. Their star rookie quarterback, Robert Griffin III, a.k.a. “RG3,”... More
Must-reads of 2012: sports
Lebron, Paterno, and fabricating race times
By Robert Weintraub Dec 28, 2012 at 06:50 AM
As 2012 draws to a close, CJR writers brainstormed the year's best reads in their beats. Patrick Hruby did an... More
Giving the Jovan Belcher story its due
On the NFL pre-game shows, Bob Costas distinguished himself by using the KC tragedy to talk about gun control; James Brown did not
By Robert Weintraub Dec 6, 2012 at 07:51 AM
I long ago vowed not to watch the NFL pregame shows that are foisted on football fans for hours on... More
ESPN’s unreality-based coverage
Karl Rove’s got nothing on the boys from Bristol
By Robert Weintraub Nov 16, 2012 at 10:40 AM
One of the main takeaways from last week’s election was that conservatives were living in a bubble of delusion, convinced... More
Cancer made Lance Armstrong hard to hate
It also made it easy for sports writers to ignore those pesky doping allegations
By Robert Weintraub Oct 26, 2012 at 11:45 AM
The final ace was pulled from Lance Armstrong’s house of cards Monday when the International Cycling Union (UCI) stripped Armstrong... More
Hey coach, lighten up!
Steve Spurrier and his coaching cohorts get pissy with the press
By Robert Weintraub Oct 12, 2012 at 07:00 AM
Steve Spurrier, the wisecrackin’ ol’ ballcoach at the University of South Carolina, has the Gamecocks in rarefied air. After... More
The future of NFL Films looks bleak
With Steve Sabol’s untimely death, there’s no one to protect what he built from the cheapskates at NFL Network
By Robert Weintraub Sep 21, 2012 at 07:10 AM
Steve Sabol died on Tuesday from brain cancer at age 69. The president of, and artistic sensibility behind, NFL Films... More
Take one for the team
Football season is upon us, and so are its tried and true clichés
By Robert Weintraub Sep 18, 2012 at 10:58 AM
There is so much to love about football’s 24/7 ubiquity on television, but there is one (and only one) downside:... More
Local television and the Dodgers-Red Sox trade
Are the Dodgers loading up on stars in advance of a new local TV deal?
By Robert Weintraub Sep 4, 2012 at 12:26 AM
The words “local television” conjure images of infomercials, Seinfeld reruns, and lame repartee on cheesy newscasts, infomercials. But local television... More
Drugs and the Olympics
What if reporters imbedded with athletes during training?
By Robert Weintraub Aug 13, 2012 at 02:56 PM
The first week of the Olympics is traditionally given over to complaints about NBC’s coverage, as we discussed last week.... More
ESPN’s Tim Tebow lovefest
Shut out of the Olympics, the ‘Worldwide Leader In Sports’ puts NFL front and center
By Robert Weintraub Aug 6, 2012 at 11:11 AM
US sports coverage last week was split neatly into two distinct, Jungian halves, represented by those sportscasting sweethearts, married couple... More
Sacred cows
The Penn State story offers a glimpse of the problems with league- and team-owned broadcast operations
By Robert Weintraub Jul 25, 2012 at 02:35 PM
Full-Court Press is a periodic column about the coverage of sports. On July 12, a report prepared by former FBI... More
Into the Fold
How the online sports community has become part of the mainstream
By Robert Weintraub Jul 16, 2009 at 04:39 PM
Regular watchers of ESPN —that is, all sports fans—may have noticed the network has begun allotting more airtime to the... More
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
This is the best moment to be in journalism (25)
The WSJ editorial page hits rock bottom (19)
Ben Mathis-Lilley’s defense of new media
Take off the nostalgia-tinted lenses
21 questions with David Remnick
What grammar mistake do you find most annoying?
Are you sure that question is grammatical?
After 20 years, the world has finally caught up with Daft Punk, so the helmet-clad retro-futurists are embarking on a new mission: to make music breathe again
What is the single most illuminating interview question to ask someone?
The NYT’s Jodi Kantor answers
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
