The B/R Interview: LZ Granderson

This week, I sat down with ESPN.com’s Page 2 columnist LZ Granderson.  Granderson is also a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and host of Game Night, a talk show on ESPN360.  As a regular contributor to Page 2, Granderson’s columns cover a variety of topics ranging from NBA commentary to editorials discussing sports and society in the United States.  He has worked in print, online and television journalism, bringing his unique perspective on sports and culture to all three mediums.

Enjoy the interview!

--Max


MT: Hi LZ, it's Max from Bleacher Report.

LZ: Hey Max. How are you?

MT:  Good, thanks. How are you? Are you hanging in there? (LZ was a bit under the weather when we did this interview.)

LZ:  I'm doing okay. Doctor's orders were to not leave the house so I'm resting, watching Casino Royale for about the twentieth time and taking antibiotics and Vicodin.

MT:  Well, thanks for toughing this one out and chatting with me.

LZ:  Thank you for thinking of me to be a part of the series.

MT:  So let's start with your background, where you grew up, went to college, your major and how you started on a path to a career in the sportswriting industry?

LZ:  I'm originally from Detroit and I went to Western Michigan for undergrad, where I majored in Interpersonal Communications with a minor in Journalism.  I worked for the student newspaper in college as well as radio and I interned at a newspaper called the Kalamazoo Gazette while in school.

And that was basically what I think is probably the last generation who studied journalism being taught that you only specialized in one medium. 

MT:  What do you mean by that exactly?

LZ:  Well, I mean that was the last generation in which crossover was discouraged in terms of the different mediums in which you were a journalist.  So if you were into print, TV journalists were vilified and online journalism wasn’t even considered at the time.  And when I took my first job, I was told that if you wrote for a newspaper, you could never be a TV person because there was a different kind of mentality involved and if you were a TV person, you shouldn’t write.

MT:  But in your work, you’ve done a fair amount of crossover.

LZ:  Yeah, because I never believed in all that. I thought it was all bullsh*t.

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