This month, CJR presents “Required Skimming,” a daily miniguide to our staffers’ beats and obsessions, ranging from finance to food. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments.
• Mike Tanier’s Walkthrough column for Football Outsiders: a mix of sharply written jokiness and detailed diagram analysis. Plus, lots of implicit, and not-so-implicit, media criticism. (Update: D’oh! Just learned Tanier left Football Outsiders last week, and took his talents to a new blog, Sports On Earth, a joint venture between USA Today and MLB Advanced Media, which apparently is still in some sort of beta phase. But no matter where Tanier is writing–he contributes to The New York Times, too–his stuff is good. So check out the new site.)
• Jonah Keri: This baseball writer for Grantland’s weekly power-rankings column isn’t original, but it’s one of the best—deeply knowledgeable without the showboating.
• Don Van Natta Jr, senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com: This former New York Times investigative star brings deep reporting and rigorous analysis to the sports beat.
• Deadspin: Still outrageous, but now complementing the venom with real reporting.
• Baseball Think Factory: A discriminating aggregator whose commenters are smarter, wittier, and better-informed than the pros.
