Neil Best retires from Newsday after covering sports media for nearly half a century

Neil Best is hanging it up.

The longtime Newsday sports media columnist announced his retirement Sunday after covering the beat for more than two decades.

I am retiring from @NewsdaySports, daily journalism and “X” at midnight on Wednesday. Thanks for reading! (It’s all good! 100% my decision! Sorry about all the exclamation points!) https://t.co/RhvR3pdG9c

— Neil Best (@sportswatch) December 28, 2025

Best’s tenure at Newsday spanned multiple eras of sports journalism. He covered the transition from print to digital, the explosion of sports talk radio, and the rise of social media as a news-breaking platform. Through it all, he remained one of the few full-time sports media columnists at a major newspaper.

Anthony Rieber will take over the beat, becoming just the fourth person to hold the position in 48 years. Stan Isaacs and Steve Zipay preceded Best, making it one of the most stable beats in sports journalism even as newspapers have shed staff across the industry.

Best made it clear in his farewell column that this was his decision. He’s been reading Newsday since August 1972 and wanted to give someone else a turn at the beat he’s held for more than two decades.

The column itself read like a greatest hits compilation of a half-century in sports journalism. Best interviewed the San Diego Chicken with his head off. He talked to Willie Mays about fishing (Willie hated it). He called Bob Sheppard at home on Thanksgiving Day to ask if the 99-year-old Yankees announcer was retiring. He covered everything from youth track meets in Barrow, Alaska, to sitting near Ray Charles at the 1993 Empire State Games opening ceremony.

Best wrote about walking down the tunnel at old Yankee Stadium past the Joe DiMaggio sign that Derek Jeter used to tap before games, acknowledging the privilege of following Jeter down that path while feeling wholly undeserving. He interviewed Ice Cube about the Raiders, Adam Sandler about Mike Francesa, and Jerry Seinfeld about WFAN.

In 1981, Best toured the Newsday building in Melville as a visitor, imagining what it would be like to work there. All he wanted to be when he grew up was Joe Gergen, the legendary Newsday sports columnist. He eventually became that, by his own admission, an inferior version of the original.

Best’s career represents something increasingly rare in sports journalism. He spent nearly 50 years at one newspaper, covering a beat that barely exists anymore at most publications. Budget cuts have eliminated sports media columnist positions across the industry. The papers that still have them often fold the beat into broader media coverage or hand it off to general assignment reporters. Best got to make a career out of it, at the same paper he started reading as a 12-year-old kid. That doesn’t happen anymore.

“Anyway, that’s that. Thanks for reading.”