The entity formerly known as the Huffington Post has added a big name, and one with some sports connections. HuffPost editor in chief Lydia Polgreen announced Tuesday that Tommy Craggs is coming on board:
https://twitter.com/lpolgreen/status/900093829906411526
Craggs joined Deadspin as a staff writer in April 2009, and became that site’s editor in early 2012 when A.J. Daulerio left to run Gawker. (Before that, he was approached by ESPN for a Grantland job, but that came to an end when Daulerio sent a pink gorilla singing telegram to Craggs’ lunch with John Walsh.) At the end of 2014, he left Deadspin to oversee editorial operations for all of Gawker Media; he resigned from that role, along with Gawker.com editor in chief Max Read, in July 2015 when Gawker founder Nick Denton and the managing partnership voted to remove a controversial post about Conde Nast’s CFO over the objections of the editorial side.
Craggs taught a sportswriting class at NYU in the summer of 2015, and joined Slate as its politics editor in March 2016. He was one of around a dozen employees laid off there the next February, and has since been freelancing, writing some notable stories for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets. He tweeted in June that he was looking for a full-time job:
https://twitter.com/tcraggs22/status/874771519142064128
Craggs has that now, and it will be interesting to see what he does at HuffPost. He oversaw some notable projects and reporting at Deadspin, including the unraveling of the Manti Te’o dead girlfriend hoax, and did the same in his role at Gawker Media. Many of his colleagues have long spoken highly of him, even in his Deadspin-departing roast. He’s also an impressive writer; pieces like this January 2016 Slate one on Cam Newton, race and the NFL, this March 2016 Washington Post opinion piece on the NCAA and amateurism, or this October 2008 New York Times (Play Magazine) piece on Renardo Sidney show that. We’ll see what he does with HuffPost, and if it winds up touching on sports or not, but it will be worth keeping an eye on.
[Lydia Polgreen on Twitter; photo from Smile Politely]
