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Hunter S. Thompson, Online Columnist

The gonzo journalist's unpredictable path to ESPN.com

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by Matt Welch

Note: This article first appeared in the Online Journalism Review.

In the spring of 2000, if you had to bet on which publication would be running a new Hunter S. Thompson column by year's end, the choice would be easy: Ted Fang's new San Francisco Examiner.

After all, the legendary journalist had spent the latter half of the 1980s writing weekly political sermons and sex dramas for the then-resurgent afternoon daily, and now Thompson's favorite "conceptual editor" -- Warren Hinckle, of Ramparts and Scanlan's Monthly fame -- was being brought on as Fang's "director of hijinx and surprises." When Suck's Tim Cavanaugh asked Hinckle in March whether HST would be one of the Fangxaminer's regular columnists, the eyepatch-wearing editor replied: "Absolutely."

But just two weeks before the Hearst Corp.'s historic newspaper swap in Thompson's beloved San Francisco, a familiar bald-headed photo byline could be found throwing a football under the title "Hey Rube!" in a splashy new online publication from ESPN called "Page 2."

"All base-runners may run to any base (but not backward) -- First to Third, Second to Home, etc.," came the immediately familiar prose, in a laugh-out-loud column about how to "fix" baseball.

It was as good an indicator as any that the new Examiner would be a disappointment to those very few people -- mostly online columnists -- who had hoped it would provide a jolt of energy to the listless newspaper business. But it also illustrated the terrific pull of ESPN Executive Editor John Walsh, a highly regarded journalist whose resume includes being the founding editor of Inside Sports and ESPN Magazine, managing editor of both Rolling Stone and U.S. News & World Report, sports editor at Newsday and the Columbia Missourian, and an editor for both the New York Times and Washington Post.

Walsh is widely credited, by most everyone except his ex-anchor Keith Olbermann (who has clashed with his former boss for three years), with transforming ESPN's SportsCenter from a goofy cable teevee show into a powerful cultural phenomenon. With ESPN Magazine on its feet, Walsh turned his attention to the Bristol, Conn. empire's Internet holdings, which, he concluded, "needed a complete change-up" -- a new site-within-a-site that "would be fun and different ... serious sometimes, and maybe more often ... not so serious at all."

So Walsh called his old pal Hunter Thompson, who got his start in journalism as a sportswriter for the Command Courier on Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and has a history of transforming obscure sports assignments into classic "gonzo" works like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved."

"A big sports guy"

"I'll take all the blame," Walsh said with a laugh from ESPN headquarters on Nov. 30. "Since I was at Rolling Stone in 1973-74, Hunter and I bonded and have remained friends throughout the last 25 years, and have gotten together a lot, and enjoy each other's company immensely. And one of our biggest bonds, if not our biggest bond, is our mutual sports fandom. Hunter's always been a big sports guy."

Page 2, Walsh explained, was conceived in part as a showcase for "unique voices who weren't necessarily associated with sports on an ongoing basis today, but who knew sports well enough or were fans of sports." So, "I approached Hunter, and he thought it was just a capital idea in terms of something that he could write about and would enjoy, and I think so far that's been the experience."

Joining Thompson have been fellow politics/sports junkie (and Joe DiMaggio biographer) Richard Ben Cramer, respected former Sports Illustrated writer Ralph Wiley and even -- for one football article, at least -- Ken Kesey.

"We were actually looking for someone to do something on Oregon-Oregon State, and one of the editors said 'the only guy I can remember from Oregon is Ken Kesey,'" Walsh explained. "So I had some friends who knew the phone number ... we called him up, and he said, 'Sure, I'd love to write that, it was one of my passions as a kid with my Dad, going to the Oregon games.'"

Next page: Sports and politics

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