National Sports Journalism Center

This is not a column. But it's not a German shepherd, either. Someone told Shirley Povich, then in his 80s, that he was writing better than ever, and the great man said, "I've learned to leave out my mistakes." So that's what this is. It's a grocery list of some of the things a guy learns by making a few thousand mistakes . . .

There is a god of journalism who answers our prayers if we make one more phone call, ask one more question, make ourselves just the slightest more of a nuisance.

The best writers are the best readers. A close second are the best listeners.

If you worry that what you're about to write might be wrong, it is.

Give it to the copy desk clean. They'll love you.

Question authority.

When you're lost in a thicket of syntax, take 10 minutes out and read five pages of E.B. White.

Every piece can't be a home run. A double in the gap works, too.

War is war. Football is a game.

I'd portrayed a fan as a drunken fool. I expected the angry phone call. A month later came a letter thanking me. He'd put himself into alcohol rehab.

Everyone starts out young, single, and hungry. The lifers stay hungry.

Today's generosity gets you pulled out of a ditch by strangers tomorrow.

You're not the athletes' friend, you're not the coach's friend, you never will be.

It's hard to say what you mean and mean what you say. But that's the goal.

Know the kicker, write to it.

Think faster than you type.

The New Yorker once ran a cartoon of Zeus atop Mount Olympus. He stared at the little people far below. They were shaking their fists and shouting, "We're tired of your Olympian views."

"Levels of the Game," by John McPhee, is a sportswriting bible.

When an athlete turns surly and says you couldn't possibly understand the game because you've never played it, what he means is that you've never played the game at his level – and he's right. Respect that even as you remind him that one need not be an arsonist to write about a house on fire. Which reminds me of a Jimmy Cannon line. On hearing that a hack columnist's house burned down, Cannon said, "The arsonist must've been an English professor."

I once asked the Cardinal shortstop Ozzie Smith one more pest's question. How did he make those dive-and-get-up-and-throw-the-guy-out-from-deep-in-the-hole plays? Happily, he was happy to explain it. Turned out he had wondered that himself and had studied video tape to understand the kinetics. He said he arched his back as he dove so that as his mid-section hit the ground, his arms and feet moved into position to spring him up. Whoa, Nellie. That is a level of the game with which no sportswriter could be familiar. I wrote a poem to Ozzie right after I thanked the generous god of journalism.

I love skeptics who skate to the edge of cold-eyed cynicism and skid to a stop, ice shavings flying.

The best editors come to you on deadline and whisper a paragraph of information into your ear.

If you're a columnist and you stumble onto news, give it to the beat guy.

Root for the story, not the home team.

Tell me something I don't know.

Never leave the messy, confusing, conflicting, mutually contradictory nuances out of a story. That's the real world. It's better than fiction.

There's always a simple way to write complicated things. Find it.

A friend of mine addicted to complex sentences got a note from his editor. It contained a full line of dots. Like, ……………………………………………………………………. The accompanying note said, "These are periods. Use some."
Reminds me of another Jimmy Cannon line. On seeing the famous New York Times figure filbert Leonard Koppett carrying a briefcase, Cannon said, "Whatcha got in there, Leonard, decimal points?"

Ben Bradlee one day said , "This ain't journalism with a capital J, this ain't religion." And I thought, "It isn't?"

Never end on a quote.

Dave Kindred's latest book, "Morning Miracle," is an inside-the-newsroom account of two years in the life of The Washington Post. Now a contributing writer at Golf Digest, Kindred is a Red Smith Award winner and member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. He can be reached at inkstained1@aol.com. He can be followed at Twitter.com/DaveKindred and facebook.com/people/Dave-Kindred/509353295.