Neil Best, longtime sports media writer for Newsday
Sports Media with Richard Deitsch
Audacy
4.5 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 585 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features Neil Best, who worked for Newsday for many decades covering sports media, the NFL and other topics. He retired from journalism in December. In this podcast, Best discusses what covering sports media was like for him over the last two decades; how he approached the job as a writer whose market was the No. 1 media market in the U.S.; the endless power of the NFL; why sports-talk radio was such an important topic for him; his time covering the Giants for time; working for the Anchorage (Alaska) Times; whether the streamers will ultimately get all the NFL content; why Newsday was one of the only places that staffed a full-time sports media columnist at a major newspaper; the future of this subject matter as far as a beat, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the sports media podcast. |
| 0:09.5 | I'm your host, Richard Deich. |
| 0:10.4 | My producer is Patrick Antonetti. |
| 0:12.6 | One guest on this episode. |
| 0:14.9 | And if you have read sports media coverage in the United States over the last 10, 15, 20 years. |
| 0:23.9 | You will know this gentleman's name. |
| 0:26.3 | Neil Best was a long time an accomplished sports writer for Newsday. |
| 0:32.2 | Covered a variety of sports at that publication from the NFL to being a general assignment reporter. |
| 0:39.6 | But in my world, most well known for being Newsday's sports media writer, and that's a paper |
| 0:46.5 | that maybe above any daily in the country, like really took sports media seriously |
| 0:53.2 | and staffed the position full time and had |
| 0:57.5 | regular columns and regular pieces on sports media. We will get to Neil's career. He's had |
| 1:07.4 | an interesting one and he is gracious enough. Now he's got a little free time to join me |
| 1:14.5 | on the sports media podcast welcome neal thank you for having me yeah um yeah no just to be you what |
| 1:21.1 | you what you mentioned about newsday's commitment to that beat i when i wrote my farewell column |
| 1:25.3 | i pointed out that we we we, our media, our sports |
| 1:28.2 | media columnist was the equivalent of Steelers coaches. Because they had three since 1969. |
| 1:35.2 | We had three since 1978. And then Mike Tomlin and I both left within two weeks of each other. |
| 1:40.7 | You would. Which was weird. But, you know, but yes, Stan Isaacs had the second sports media column in the country after |
| 1:47.3 | the Boston Globe. |
| 1:48.1 | He started his in 78, and I was an avid reader of it from day one. |
| 1:52.6 | And one just cool thing about that while I'm thinking of it is I went back and looked at |
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