Tracy Ringolsby interview

New Salon column is a Q&A with Tracy Ringolsby, who lost his job with the Rocky Mountain News when it closed two weeks ago and immediately started a new blog with two colleagues to continue covering the Colorado Rockies. There’s audio of the interview too.

I’ve been reading Ringolsby since the ’80s, when he worked at the Dallas Morning News and his Sunday notes columns were syndicated. We talked about the future of journalism, a pretty hot topic in my circles lately as the newspaper industry comes crashing down.

My obsession with this subject — my attempts to educate myself about the current thinking, my own efforts to think it through — is the main reason why I haven’t been writing much for Salon lately. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, nor is there enough brain capacity, to think clearly about such disparate subjects and be able to spit out sports commentary I’d stand behind.

I’ll be writing about the Tournament over the next few weeks, I’ll have a Q&A with Allen Barra about his Yogi Berra book and I figure I’ll do the usual baseball season preview nonsense. Maybe by next month my obsession will have passed and I’ll pick up the column pace again.