Sports journalist, author and professor Melissa Isaacson joins Brian this week to talk about teaching, writing, reporting and the 1990s Chicago Bulls.
Melissa and Brian start out by talking about what it’s like to teach journalism — particularly sports journalism — during the cornavirus pandemic in 2020. Melissa talks about how being forced to teach online has made her a better professor, how to teach students to do better phone interviews and how this time can be an opportunity for students.
Melissa then discusses her excellent book State and what it was like, as a journalist, to write such an incredibly personal work and the advice that S.L. Price gave her that jumpstarted her work.
Then, of course, Brian and Melissa discuss The Last Dance. Melissa, who was the Bulls’ beat writer for the Chicago Tribune for their first three championships, describes what it was like to cover Michael Jordan and those great Bulls teams. She and Brian also discuss the biggest ways journalism has changed since the mid-1990s. Hint — it’s not all Twitter’s fault.
State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation
Fear: Trump in the White House
Subscribe: