Frank Isola, Clifton Brown and Ben Reiter

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3 • 721 Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2018

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode 16 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features three guests: First, a candid conversation with longtime NBA writer and broadcaster Frank Isola, who was let go this week by Tronc after 25 years of working at the New York Daily News. The second guest is Clifton Brown, an enterprise reporter at the IndyStar and the author of Bearing the Cross: My Inspiring Journey from Poverty to the NFL and Sports Television. The final guest is Sports Illustrated senior writer Ben Reiter, the author of a new book, Astroball: The New Way To Win It All. In this podcast, Isola, the co-host of SiriusXM NBA Radio’s “The Starting Lineup,” and an ESPN TV contributor, discusses how he learned he had lost his longtime job with the Daily News; the impact off the decision on his family; why he feels it happened; what management has said and not said to him; how he feels about the newspaper business in New York City; what it has been like working at a paper with significant financial troubles; his years covering the Knicks and the NBA; praise for Jeff Van Gundy; his analysis of the Kawhi Leonard-Demar DeRozen trade; his professional relationship with Carmelo Anthony; why he enjoys working for ESPN’s Around The Horn and PTI group; his desire to keep writing; and much more. Brown discusses the life of Irv Cross, the first African-American sports analyst on national television; what it was like for Cross when he was first hired by CBS; how he came upon Cross’s story; racism that Cross faced in television; why Cross left the sports television business; how Cross’s health is today, and much more. Reiter discusses how he came up with the concept for his book; how much cooperation the Astros afforded him; how he and his agent created and shopped the book proposal; his reporting and writing process for the book; learning about book promotion and why it is no crime to be shameless pushing your book; the importance of doing book readings at book stores; advice for first time authors, and much 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 Deich, and welcome to the sports media podcast. My producer, as always, is Lou Pellegrino. Three guests this week, three really interesting conversations.
0:12.3	First off, Frank Isola, the long time and acclaimed Daily News sports writer who focused on the NBA.
0:19.8	Frank is incredibly honest and provides a lot of
0:21.8	candor on what it was like to get the call the other day where he had been laid off from that
0:26.8	paper after 25 years, trunk coming in and essentially sticking the knife in the daily news. So Frank
0:34.9	Isola on what it's been like for him.
0:39.5	And we also get into a little bit of basketball, including Kauai Leonard and maybe why
0:43.3	Carmelo Anthony is misunderstood.
0:45.9	After that, it's Clifton Brown, who wrote a book on Irv Cross, the pioneering
0:51.4	African-American sports analyst at CBS.
0:53.8	That book is Baring the Cross,
0:55.2	My Inspiring Journey from Poverty to the NFL and sports television.
0:59.0	And so Clifton talks about Irv Cross, one of the interesting figures in sports broadcasting
1:02.9	history.
1:03.4	And we finish up with Ben Ryder, senior writer at Sports Illustrated, my former colleague.
1:08.1	He is the author of Astro Ball, the new way to win it all.
1:11.5	And rather than talk about the Astros in our conversation, we talk about how one goes and writes a book proposal and how you have to learn to promote a book, which is not something they teach in journalism school.
1:23.7	So Frank Isola, Clifton Brown, and Ben Ryder, all coming up on the sports media podcast.
1:29.3	All right, as I said at the top, we bring in Frank Isola to start. NBA fans are very familiar
1:35.9	with Frank Isola. It's one of the most respected national NBA voices that's out there, worked
1:43.2	at the Daily News for 25 years.
1:46.8	He is the co-host with Brian Scalabrini on Sirius XM NBA Radio.
	...

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