It’s no secret that the newspaper industry isn’t what it used to be, and the reasons are far too complex to solve here. For those of us who either remain in it or consider ourselves a product of it, however, there is a deep and abiding affection for the experiences that built us, the days that propelled us into this present wilderness that is the media landscape.
Jackie MacMullan is from those days.
From the rooftop parking lot at Morrissey Boulevard to the ink-stained floors inside, MacMullan forged her indomitable journalism skill in the halls of the Boston Globe. From intern to premier beat writer to the first woman to be a general sports columnist on these vaunted pages, MacMullan honed the same passion and talent that took her from the basketball court at Westwood High to the one at the University of New Hampshire and applied them to her work, building the chops that would eventually take her to national media powerhouse ESPN.
MacMullan announced last week she is retiring from ESPN, and the news brought a predictable and well-deserved onslaught of praise, respect, and good wishes. Consider this my jump on the bandwagon. Though I never had the privilege of working side by side with the famous Jackie Mac, I feel connected to her through these pages, as if taking a metaphorical baton in the legacy of this great paper.
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In true Jackie Mac fashion, she made sure I felt that handoff, finding me at my first Celtics assignment for the Globe to offer good luck, her cellphone number, and an invitation to reach out any time, a testament not simply to the generosity she has always had with fellow writers, but to the enduring devotion she has to the place that gave her her start in the business.
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“I loved my job. I couldn’t wait to get to work,” MacMullan told me over the phone, driving as she left the ESPN studio. “I’d drive up to the parking garage and I’d say, ‘Oh good, there’s Leigh Montville’s car, or Kevin Dupont’s car, or Will McDonough’s car.’
“Everyone went to the office. I would just sit there and listen to the stories. I was in heaven. I was covering colleges, crew races — I was not covering the Celtics and the Bruins and the Red Sox, not yet.”
She was on a different, more personal beat. The sportswriting one. And she killed it.
“The thing was, my big three — Will and Leigh and Bob Ryan — they were the best at what they did,” she said. “Ryan was the incredible game-story writer, best of all time. His memory was unbelievable, his attention to detail. Montville was the wordsmith.
“And then Will McDonough. Nobody, and I mean nobody, got people to tell them stuff like Will McDonough. I learned so much from him. He was so good to me. He was my godfather, that’s what I called him. I was a pallbearer at his funeral. I was just devastated when he died. Such a good person. So good to me.”
Talent recognizes talent.
That’s how it worked with Ian Thomsen, too, who started at the paper the same time as MacMullan, he the summer intern in sports, she his counterpart in news. They were immediate friends who became lifelong friends, an initial conversation on the cafeteria line setting them on the same path, one MacMullan would wear out walking from news side to sports to hang out by the writers she’d idolized growing up. Together they would help carry the section forward, but never without looking back for inspiration.
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They still do.
“Both of us have always thought of ourselves as Globies because of just the unbelievable fortune of getting to start our careers at what very well may have been the best sports section of all time,” Thomsen said. “For us to be part of that, and then the collegial atmosphere of the place. The fact that you have all of this talent, yet there was humility to it, didn’t overwhelm you with personality; they were great role models.”
Of course, MacMullan is a role model, and really, one of my favorite kinds. She rose to the top of her profession not because of her gender, but because of her ability. Yet at the same time, she knew how much her gender mattered, how much the representation matters.
Did you hear her as she departed the set of the ESPN debate show “Pardon the Interruption,” telling the powers that be that the audience had heard her voice enough, and it’s time to give new and different women the platform? That matters.
“She is such a pioneer, but she transcended the fact that she is the first in anything,” Thomsen said. “When you were around her, you never thought of her as breaking ground, she was just so natural. But then you look back and see all that she did break through.”
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MacMullan appreciates it all, even if she’s a little uncomfortable being such a center of attention. She’d love for fellow trailblazers — those like longtime baseball writer/editor Claire Smith, who left ESPN before her — to be celebrated this way. She’s ready to recede. It’s tiring, having spent all that energy getting athletes, executives, and readers to open up and tell their stories. She’s ready to spend more time with her family at their new beach house in New Hampshire.
Knowing her, she’ll find a way to do retirement better than the rest of us, too.
She already has done so much. Nothing left to prove. Time to remember the best of those nights in the office with deadlines and rewrites, those nights on the town with dinners and drinks. Thomsen recalled a long-ago dinner party hosted by Ryan, an evening replete with great food, company, and conversation, and how the then-youngsters spent their drive home debating which one of them might best fulfill a certain Globe legacy.
“We were laughing about who was going to be like Will McDonough when we grew up,” he said. “She was saying, ‘You’re going to be like Will McDonough,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely not, you are.’ I turned out to be right, and entirely in her own way.
“She has this presence that she backs up with her talent — and you notice I’m not using the past tense because I’m not convinced she’s retiring — with her talent and perspective and her sense of empathy that puts her in her own place.”
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Bravo.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.