The Last Sportswriters of New York (Dave Kaplan|Mar. 9th, 2025, New York: Intelligencer)
Along with 75-year-old Steve Serby and 74-year-old Larry Brooks, Mushnick is part of a holy trinity of snowy-haired sportswriters who anchor a section that trumpets itself as the “Best Sports in New York” — a claim that has gone virtually unchallenged since the New York Times shuttered its sports section and the Daily News, the Post’s fiercest competitor for decades, has been reduced to a skeleton operation. The paper covers the city’s sports scene like it’s still 1985 while navigating a vastly changed sports-media landscape. Locker rooms are now filled with what former Times columnist George Vecsey calls “the thumb people” — less-seasoned reporters constantly scrolling and tweeting updates. “It’s kind of interesting walking in there and seeing kids 50 years younger than me,” admits Brooks, who has been writing about the Rangers since the mid-1970s. Serby, who’s been covering the Jets and the Giants for over four decades, says, “Some of today’s athletes have no concept of what it means to be a reporter or columnist.”
In an industry ravaged by layoffs and early retirements, Brooks, Mushnick, and Serby are an endangered species — tab men from the old school.