“You can have an allegiance in your heart for the team you’re covering. When the game is over, you put on your journalist’s hat and write the story. I never saw that contradiction. I always wrote for the fan and try to emphasize the fan’s point of view in my stories.”
Is that a quote from an overeager millennial blogger, or a naive kid just starting his or her first job in professional journalism? No, it's straight from the mouth of Bob Ryan, legendary basketball columnist and four-time National Sportswriter of the Year.
Maybe it's because I never went to journalism school or worked a news desk, but I never accepted the concept that passion for a team and sport must be sacrificed on the altar of objectivity in order to produce “good” writing.