Larry Whiteside forged a family of black sports scribes
By Jourdan Duncan, N.C. A&T
Larry “Sides” Whiteside was a pioneering sportswriter best known for mentoring journalists of color and creating “The Black List” to increase Black representation in the profession. A graduate of Drake University, Whiteside spent more than four decades on the baseball beat, mostly writing about the Boston Red Sox for The Boston Globe.
An authority on “black baseball” and the Negro Leagues, Whiteside was among the first American journalists to follow international baseball. Through much of his career, he was the only Black journalist who covered Major League Baseball for a daily metropolitan newspaper.
Because of failing health, he retired from The Globe in 2004. The Red Sox honored Whiteside’s contributions to the game with a ceremonial first pitch in 2003 and with a moment of silence upon his death in June 2007.
Posthumously, Whiteside received the Career Excellence Award from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Whiteside’s legacy in journalism continues through the NABJ Sports Task Force’s Larry Whiteside Scholarship, which supports aspiring sportswriters.
Jourdan Duncan is a junior multimedia journalism student from Atlanta, Ga.