Helping women and minorities into newsrooms since 1993
Helping women and minorities into newsrooms since 1993
During his sophomore year at Holy Cross, Dan Shaughnessy, then an aspiring sports writer, was instructed to read columns written by then-New York Times sports columnist Red Smith. More than 50 years later, Shaughnessy received the 2026 Red Smith Award presented by the Associated Press Sports Editors.
The award, named after Smith, who was the first recipient in 1981, is given to a writer or editor for major contributions to sports journalism; recipients are enshrined in the Red Smith Hall of Fame.
Shaughnessy’s career has been nearly exclusively with The Boston Globe. After eight full-time years with the Globe in 1989, he began writing columns.
“You've got to pinch yourself that this actually happened,” Shaughnessy said. “The Red Smith Award is all about newspapers, and it's the whole country and all about sports, so the company that you keep there is just breathtaking.”
Growing up, Shaughnessy was inspired by reading the work of storied sports columnist John R. Tunis, who was dubbed “the inventor of the modern sports story.”
Yet as he’s transitioned into the later stages of his career, Shaughnessy hasn’t seen the next generation of sports reporters strive to become columnists like he did in the 1980s.
“I’m surprised there aren’t many more younger people, even on my own staff, who aspire to do it,” Shaughnessy said. “I keep waiting to be replaced … I don’t feel like that many of them are hungry to be doing what I do, and I’m not sure why that is.”
Shaughnessy earned his big break in 1977 when he became the Baltimore Orioles reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Washington Star. In 2026, Kyle Goon operates as a sports columnist for the Baltimore Banner.
The University of Maryland grad echoes Shaughnessy’s sentiment toward column writing, and he’s used social media such as X and TikTok to drive viewership to his work.
“If I can publish a clip of my column that can generate intense interest online, it might provoke people to engage with the rest of the column,” Goon wrote.
Shaughnessy’s lengthy career in sports media led him to author 13 books, including a New York Times bestseller, Francona on the former Red Sox manager who won a pair of World Series titles for the city. But through all his years, he’s still learning and improving.
“If you think you got the column thing figured out,” Shaughnessy said, “you're in trouble.”