Editor's note: Please use the audio player on the right column to listen to an excerpt of K.C.'s interview.K.C. Johnson currently covers the Chicago Bulls for the Chicago Tribune's print edition and manages a blog for the Chicago Tribune web site on which he also covers the Bulls and the NBA. Johnson joined the Tribune staff in 1990 and began writing for the online version of the newspaper in 1996. Johnson's first full-time beat at the Tribune was covering the Chicago Blackhawks for two years before moving on to the Bulls. He attended Beloit College (a small college in Wisconsin) for his undergrad studies where he majored in creative writing. The first publication he wrote for was the Beloit Daily News. (Photo provided by K.C. Johnson)
Camelia Rodriguez: What drew you to sports journalism?
K.C. Johnson: I played sports my whole life but I wasn’t good enough to make it to the pros or anything. [Laughs] I always loved writing so I figured it was kind of a way to combine the two and stay around the world of sports. I read a lot of great sportswriters growing up in Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune and I always figured it’d be something fun to do.
CR: How different is sports journalism today from how it was when you first started as a sportswriter and how has technology changed your job?
KJ: Do you have six hours for my answer? [Laughs] When I first started in this business a reporter’s goal was to remain anonymous. We were just a faceless person with a byline in the paper. But now you almost have to brand yourself. You have to become an expert. It seems like every sportswriter in the world is on TV or radio talking about the sport they cover.
That aspect of the business has changed. Now there’s so much more opinion, analysis, and commentary involved. That’s just where the business is headed.
As far as technology has changed, everything is instantaneous now. Before you could know something and think you know it exclusively and sit on it for tomorrow’s newspaper. Now, no matter what you know when you know it, you can basically put it online right away. You can blog about it or put it on your Twitter.
CR: How did you feel when you first began writing your column in 1996 for the Tribune’s new Internet site?
KJ: That’s a great question. At the time I was ecstatic that I got the break that I got. I had been at the Tribune since 1990 and had mostly been dealing with high school sports coverage and wanted to do more. They called me into the office and told me to cover Michael Jordan and the Bulls. I gotta be honest, at the time I wanted to be in print because online was brand new and nobody knew about it. But I actually had a lot of fun with it.
I ended up really embracing working online because it was new and different. It was kind of fun to develop a following and interacting with the readers*...I’ll be honest, given that the view back then was that print was more legitimate than online and everybody read print I was still pitching stories for the paper. So I was sportswriting for the online site and writing stories for the newspaper. It’s kind of funny how things have evolved. I would say now that online is more legitimate than print just because that anyone under the age of 30 reads their news online.
(K.C.’s blog "Full-Court Press")
*One of the things K.C. incorporated to his coverage of the Bulls in 1996 was something called the "mailbag" which has become somewhat standard for online sportswriters. Readers submit questions to "Ask K.C. Johnson".
CR: You recently traveled to London. How was that experience covering the Bulls from overseas?
KJ: Anytime you’re in a different country it’s going to be a great experience. It is kind of neat to see how stuff you take for granted that are part of your everyday life are viewed differently and maybe more passionately elsewhere.
It’s just neat to view things from a different perspective. It’s something that the players get excited about too. They might have been down-playing the event a little bit because they probably thought ‘Oh, man. We gotta fly all the way to London’. But once they got there they all really liked it and the team got really into it. It was obviously a great experience for everyone involved.
(Read K.C.’s article from London here)
CR: Do you think that there is more competitiveness now in sports journalism than when you first started out?
KJ: It’s a different kind of competition because everything has to be so instantaneous...I think we’ve lost a little bit of the thoughtful writing. I think everybody is so focused on the now that substance and quality is eroded as a result. That’s just my opinion. I mean, not everyone shares that.
I’ve always found journalism to be competitive. Even back in the day when I’d wake up in the morning to compare what I wrote to what the Sun-Times had written. It’s just a different kind of competition now because there’s just so many more people because of the Internet and there’s the need to do it more quickly.
CR: How are you using Twitter in terms of being a journalistic tool?
KJ: I’m using Twitter to promote some of the work we’re doing at the Tribune. I also promote our mailbag on Twitter. I noticed some NBA writers are tweeting during the games. I’ve done that a few times, but I feel that if you’re a Bulls fan you’re going to be watching the game; not paying attention my Twitter account. I draw the line there. I don’t know if it’s the right call or not, but it’s just the call that I’ve made.
(K.C.’s Twitter)
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