Racing coverage in print

[Calzone Lord]

To me, one of the most interesting things is the way horse racing is covered from generation to generation.

In certain periods I favor, you had a mix of very knowledgeable analysts (incredibly so for their time) who were both great writers and strongly opinionated... sometimes to the point of seemingly being inflammatory. They would be teamed up with gossip writers who wrote under pen names and loved using unnamed sources. Mesmerizing stuff!

In periods I hate, you have a lot of cutesy writers who don't always have a great understanding of the sport -- they favor fluff and human interest nonsense and over do it with superlatives to the stars of the day. They never are opinionated in a negative sort of way and they act as almost PR for the sport.

I think a few newspapers out there are going for the inflammatory coverage -- but they are doing it with the modern journalistic integrity and using writers who know almost nothing about horse racing. That was until the recent Calder piece...I think modern journalistic integrity wasn't used in that one.


Some of the great old racing writers could be a little disjointed from time to time ... and sometimes even from the outset. This column starts off more like a book review than a horse racing column ...








It's a little alarming when you read guys like Walter Vosbrugh from 100 years ago and Salvator from 90 years ago -- and they seem to have a better general understanding of horse racing than AT LEAST more than half of the people who write about it today for industry publications.