Kevin Blackistone | Philip Merrill College of Journalism

Kevin Blackistone
Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism
B.S. Northwestern University; M.S. Boston University

Office: 4105 Journalism
Phone: 301-405-2418
E-mail: kblackistone@jmail.umd.edu

Kevin Blackistone is a national columnist for AOL FanHouse, a panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn, an occasional contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered and co-author of A Gift for Ron, a memoir by former NFL star Everson Walls published in November 2009 about his kidney donation to one-time teammate Ron Springs. Blackistone is a former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News from September 1990 to September 2006. In 1981, he started his journalism career in earnest as a city reporter at The Boston Globe. In 1983, he moved to Chicago to write for The Chicago Reporter, a monthly investigative magazine on Chicago’s racial and social issues. In 1986, Blackistone joined The Dallas Morning News as a general assignment reporter on the city desk before joining the business page where he covered economics for several years. In 1990, after covering Nelson Mandela's U.S. tour, Blackistone moved to the sports page where over the next 16 years he covered the Summer Olympics, Super Bowl, Wimbledon, the World Cup, the Tour de France, the British Open, the NBA Finals, Final Four, national college football championship, NFL playoffs, Major League Baseball playoffs, world championship boxing matches and other events more than once. For three years, he also wrote the sports column at Emerge, a monthly review of politics and culture that Time magazine hailed as an “uncompromising voice that made [it] the nation’s best black news magazine.” Blackistone is a recipient of numerous awards, including awards for sports column writing from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors, a Chicago Newspaper Guild award for investigative reporting, and a National Association of Black Journalists award for enterprise reporting. Blackistone was a Davenport Fellow at the University of Missouri and a Wharton Business Journalism Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Martin Luther King Fellow at Boston University.

Courses Taught: JOUR328 Special Topics in News Writing and Reporting: Sports Reporting and Writing. JOUR458 Special Topics in Journalism: Sports Journalism and Social Change.

Expertise: Opinion writing

Campus Committees: Senior Scholar Search Committee

Affiliations: Baseball Writers Association of America. U.S. Basketball Writers Association. Football Writers Association of America. National Association of Black Journalists.