The Other 51 Brian Moritz

Wendell Barnhouse joins Brian to talk about his long and storied career as a sports journalist.

Wendell talks about what it was like to cover Duke-Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA men’s  Tournament (the Christian Laettner shot), how doing layout and editing stories for 13 years helped him be a better writer, and why he views himself as more of a craftsman than an artist. 

Rabbit holes include the old SportsJournalists.com message boards, and the eternal question of how do you castrate an orange?

Joe Posnanski joins Brian this week to talk all about his new book, “Why We Love Baseball.” 

In the introduction to this book, Joe writes that "This is the book I always hoped would be on the shelf” of his library when he was a kid. In this episode, he tells Brian why this would have been the perfect book for him when he was 10 years old. 

Joe discusses how he had the title of the book before anything else, how he developed the book’s structure, and how he came up with the structures for all 108(ish) essays in the book.

Joe also talks about what he has learned about himself as a writer over the yearsl, and the importance of discipline in writing.

Rabbit holes include our current Taylor Swift eras, Ozzie Smith YouTube, and the dump ballparks of our youth. 

Sam Borden of ESPN joins Brian this week to talk about reporting, interviewing, and life as a foreign correspondent.

Sam has probably the best job title of anyone we’ve had as a guest on the podcast — Global Sports Correspondent for ESPN. Sam talks about how he got that job, how he built a successful career as a sports journalist despite not being a sports fan, and how he finds stories to write.

Sam and Brian also talk about what life is really like as a foreign correspondent. It’s not all Hemingway and lunches on the Seine. Sam talks about finding fixers who can help you report in foreign languages, and how he tracked down Darko Milicic at an apple orchard in Serbia.

Sam also talks about the biggest difference between interviewing for broadcast and interviewing for a print piece, how the concept of the North Star can help any journalist.

Dr. Jenn Billinson from Nazareth University joins us to talk about the state of social media, and what the heck is going on with Twitter and Twitter replacements. 

How did a guy who started his career in radio become one of the most influential newspaper sports journalists in the history of Western New York?

Chuck Pollock, Brian’s former boss and the longtime sports editor and columnist for The Times Herald in Olean, N.Y., joins Brian to talk about column writing, journalism, and his 50-year career.

Chuck traces his career from the Vietnam War, through radio in Pennsylvania, and to the newsroom on Norton Drive in Olean where he worked for 50 years. He talks about working for Mike Abdo and Bob Davies and why they were so influential on him. He talks about what it was like covering Buffalo sports in the 1970s writing for a family-owned newspaper, the changes in the industry, why he left the OTH and what’s next for him.

We talk about the single-best definition of news either one of us has ever heard, and why having a column every day is so vital for newspapers. And where did Chuck’s unique typing style come from?

Bob Crawford, podcaster, history buff, and the bass player for The Avett Brothers (Brian's favorite band), joins Brian this week to talk his new podcast series, Founding Son: John Quincy's America.

Bob and Brian talk about what made John Quincy Adams stand out as a story worth telling, how Adams is the bridge between Washington and Lincoln, a vessel to tell the story of America between the revolution and the Civil War, and a good, good man. What stories about Adams did Bob most want to tell but had to cut?

Bob discusses how his story editor helped him focus not on the trees that were so fascinating but on the forest as a whole, how he developed his pitch for the show (and even forgot about it at one point), how he used Miro as an organizational tool, and the writing tip that he learned from Twitter.

Rabbit holes in this episode include Martin Van Buren, Abraham Lincoln, the Seward House in Auburn, N.Y., and spinning a stand-up bass.