Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins will deliver the inaugural Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism, a speech titled “Why Games Matter: Stories We Tell Ourselves about Ourselves,” at 4 p.m., April 20 in the Student Activity Center auditorium at The University of Texas at Austin.
Created to honor one of the most influential sportswriters of his generation, the Frank Deford Lecture in Sports Journalism offers a platform for America’s most informed and insightful sports commentators to discuss the overarching societal and cultural issues associated with the influential industry they cover. It was established in 2010 after Deford’s address to The University of Texas at Austin campus and will be held annually as an event anchoring the Texas Program in Sports and Media‘s (TPSM) McGarr Symposium on Sports and Society.
A feature writer and columnist at Sports Illustrated since 1962, a commentator for NPR and a correspondent for HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” Deford has agreed to donate his professional papers to the TPSM to be catalogued and be made available for research. He also is the author of 15 books, including the novel “Everybody’s All-American,” which was named one of Sports Illustrated’s Top 25 Sports Books of All Time and was later made into a movie. He has been voted “U.S. Sportswriter of the Year” by his peers six times.
Jenkins has worked as a columnist and feature writer at the Washington Post. She also has written for Sports Illustrated and is the author of five books, including the bestseller “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life” with cyclist Lance Armstrong. In 2002, she was named Columnist of the Year by the Associated Press.
In conjunction with the lecture, the School of Journalism is announcing the Sports Illustrated Sports Journalism Internship. The University of Texas at Austin is one of two academic institutions to partner with Sports Illustrated to host two sports journalism upper division undergraduate or graduate students to spend a semester in New York working for the magazine. The internship will allow for relocation stipend and an hourly wage to work full time. A Sports Illustrated internship information session takes place prior to the Deford lecture. For more information on the internship, contact TPSM program manager Christopher Hart.
