Really enjoyed this post by Bryan Curtis. It should be read by every current and future sportswriter. There’s a lot of reality here.

Some samples:

“great piece!” (exp.) — a compliment for a story that’s longer than 2,000 words.

instant classic (n.) — a close game a sportswriter happened to watch live.

Random Thoughts (n.) — a new name for the old “Notes” column.

source close to the process, a (n.) — the most anonymous tipster in sportswriting. A “source close to the process” could be a player, a general manager, an agent, or a pool boy. A writer in search of an equally vague term might try “a source familiar with the team’s thinking.”

Golden Age of Sportswriting (n.) — usually the 1920s, but the phrase may refer to the glory days of Laguerre’s Sports Illustrated, Walsh’s Inside Sports, or the Gammons-Ryan-McDonough Boston Globe sports section. Stanley Woodward, 1949: “After considerable research I can find no evidence to support the theory that sports writing had any good old days. … The only thing that interests me is the modern American sports page which, as far as I can see, owes nothing to antiquity. It didn’t even evolve. It sprang full-fashioned from the forehead of Zeus.”

And there’s much more. Worth the read.