It looks like Charlie Pierce will be adding to his Sports Illustrated archive. SI managing editor Chris Stone tweeted this week that Pierce has signed on as a contributor, both to write columns for SI.com and some magazine pieces:
some news: @ESQPolitics aka Charlie Pierce has signed on as an @sinow contributor; will write 25+ columns, some mag pieces, break some glass
— Chris Stone (@LAT_ChrisStone) April 19, 2016
Pierce has been doing more political coverage than sports lately, particularly for Esquire, but he is a long-time sportswriter as well. He wrote for Grantland during that website’s existence, and the selection of his past spots on Wikipedia is quite something:
In the 1980s and ’90, he was a staff reporter for the Boston Phoenix and, later, a sports columnist for the Boston Herald.
Pierce is currently the lead political blogger for Esquire, a position he has held since September 2011. He also wrote for ESPN’s Grantland. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe Sunday magazine, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sports Illustrated, The National Sports Daily, GQ, and the e-zine Slate as well as the Media Matters blog Altercation, hosted by historian/pundit Eric Alterman.
Pierce makes appearances on radio as a regular contributor to NPR programs Only A Game and Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!. Recently Pierce has begun making weekly appearances on the Stephanie Miller Show. He represented the Globe on several occasions on ESPN’s Around the Horn and often co-hosts with Bob Ryan on NESN’s Globe 10.0.
Some of Pierce’s previous SI stories are quite good, such as this 2010 feature on Steve Nash at 36 and this 1992 piece on the tough upbringing of boxer James Toney. If he can hit at that level, this could be an excellent addition for SI. Pierce does have his critics, though, especially for some of the times where he’s brought politics into his sports work:
https://twitter.com/38Godfrey/status/722509954066866177
We’ll see how this one works out for SI, but it’s certainly notable to see them adding a big name, especially as the trend has largely been the other way in recent years.
