Covering Serena Williams: A conversation with Jon Wertheim and Scott Price

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3 • 721 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2022

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 233 of the Sports Media Podcast features a conversation with Jon Wertheim, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, a senior correspondent for 60 Minutes and a senior analyst for The Tennis Channel, and Scott Price, who worked for 26 years as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and wrote under the byline S.L. Price. Both Wertheim and Price covered Serena Williams for the duration of her career. In this podcast, Wertheim and Price discuss covering Serena Williams and the first time they interacted with her; Price’s cover story in the Sept. 20, 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated which chronicled Serena winning her first major and becoming the first African-American woman to win a major since Althea Gibson in 1958; the dynamic between Serena and the media who covered her; comparisons with her sister Venus; the subject of race and tennis; the evolution of Serena as a subject; being critical of Serena and what that meant; expectations for this year’s U.S. Open; what Serena might do in the future, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. This is Richard Dich and welcome to the sports media podcast. My producer is Patrick Antonetti. Two guests this week. One topic. I've been looking forward to doing this for a while. It is a podcast on covering Serena Williams, the not arguably, in my opinion, the greatest women's tennis player of all time.
0:25.3	Apologies to the Steffi Graff fans out there who certainly have an argument.
0:29.5	And I have two writers, longtime friends as well, who covered Serena Williams' entire career,
0:35.6	who are two of the greatest tennis writers to ever grace pages.
0:40.5	That's no hyperbole.
0:42.3	John Wertheim is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, senior correspondent for 60 Minutes, and a senior analyst for the tennis channel, multiple bestselling books as well.
0:53.6	He is joined by Scott Price, who worked for Sports
0:56.4	Illustrated for 26 years as a senior writer. His byline was SL Price, for those of you
1:01.1	who read Sports Illustrated during those years. He wrote some of the most important stories in the
1:06.0	history in the magazine and covered too many tennis majors to mention. He's also a best-selling author as well,
1:12.6	his last book playing through the whistle, steel football, and an American town.
1:16.8	And we go about an hour on Serena, what it was like to cover her, what their first impressions
1:25.0	of Serena, the kind of access that they got from Serena and the
1:30.1	Williams family, what the dynamic was between Serena and the press, and just an overall
1:36.3	exploration of Serena Williams as a sports subject. Again, one of the most iconic athletes of her time.
1:47.9	And when she departs the court, which it looks like after this year's U.S. Open,
1:52.7	it is going to leave a major void.
1:55.7	So an hour conversation with John Wertheim and Scott Price on Serene Williams coming up on the
2:02.8	sports media podcast.
2:07.2	All right, as I said at the top, I'm absolutely looking forward to this because it's a,
2:13.3	you know, not only is it a sport that I've been part of and have been a fan of for a long time, but my two guests are two people that I worked very, very close with.
2:23.2	They are two of my favorite colleagues.
	...

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