‘Show up’: Dan Shaughnessy reflects on career at Boston Globe while accepting Red Smith Award
If you’re a sports journalist and Larry Bird offers to “pay your way if you go now” to another beat, it probably means you’re doing something right. Clearly, Dan Shaughnessy has been doing something right during his storied career at The Boston Globe.
And his approach to success is simple, even as one of journalism’s most prominent columnists: Show up.
Shaughnessy on Friday formally accepted the Red Smith Award, the lifetime achievement award given by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the top career award in American sports journalism. The organization, made up of sports editors and other journalists from around the country, named Shaughnessy as the 2026 winner of the award in March.
At an award luncheon during the APSE Summer Conference in Arlington, Virginia, Shaughnessy reflected on six decades writing for what he considers “the best audience out there” — sports fans in Boston.
“I’m very humbled and honored to be here,” he said. “It means a lot.”
ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian, who was mentored by Shaughnessy when they covered baseball for The Washington Star, presented his longtime friend with the award.
“Dan, like Red Smith, is a brilliant writer, a relentless reporter, and an absolutely fearless columnist,” Kurkjian said. “He taught me how to be a baseball writer, how to be a journalist, how to be fair and accurate and yet tough when I had to be.”
Those values, along with a commitment to informing and entertaining fans while also holding teams and players accountable, have served as hallmarks of Shaughnessy’s career.
“One of the great strengths of Dan,” Kurkjian said, “is he was never afraid — still is never afraid — and never intimidated.
“Toughest journalist I’ve ever met.”
Once, on a team plane to the White House after the Celtics won an NBA championship, a player’s wife “goes up to Dan, looks him right in the eyes, and says, ‘God, I hate you,’ ” Kurkjian said. “But then she pauses and … smiles and says, ‘But God, you are a great writer.’
“And that’s what it’s all about. Dan doesn’t care if you like him or not, but you have to respect what he does and the way he does it.”
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Shaughnessy is the 46th recipient of the Red Smith Award. He has been named the Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year 14 times, and he has won APSE top-10 columnist honors in the largest circulation category 15 times, including for columns written in 2025. He has written 13 books, and he received the BBWAA Career Excellence Award in 2016.
Still, it wasn’t easy to get here.
Shaughnessy’s first beat was the freshman football team for the Holy Cross Crusader (he quipped about writing that the freshmen were “in a rebuilding year” that season). He also developed a side hustle with The Associated Press; for $7 a game, he’d run up and down stairways in ballparks and arenas to get quotes from players and coaches. He got called out for asking “high school questions” to league MVPs and had plenty of learning moments. He figured out there would be “little setbacks” — sometimes lots of them — but that “you gotta take it, suck it up, and move on.” The most important thing? “Keep getting out there. Show up.” Especially after writing something critical about a player or coach.
Shaughnessy entertained the journalists assembled in Arlington with stories of his knack for riling up Bird, David Ortiz, Terry Francona and others during his time covering the Celtics and Red Sox.
“I never got close with the players; they weren’t comfortable,” he said.
He was successful, however, in turning around his relationship with Francona, the former Red Sox manager who went on to manage in Cleveland. When Francona was fired from Boston in 2011, Shaughnessy’s literary agent urged him to email Francona to team up for a book.
“So I’m like, ‘Dear Tito, sorry you got fired. Wanna do a book?’ Comes back in seconds. ‘No, and not with you.’ ” Eventually, Shaughnessy talked him into it. “Francona: The Red Sox Years” was published in 2013.
How did Shaughnessy do it?
“I kept showing up,” he said.
Now more than ever, that approach is so important for sports journalists. With advancing technology and several papers no longer in existence, he acknowledged that the industry is in a state of flux: “We don’t move the needle the way we used to, but it’s still important to have newsgathering, reporting and storytelling.” Shaughnessy doesn’t necessarily relish the changing landscape, but he recognizes that journalists must face it head-on.
“Adjust or perish,” he told me.
That resonated Friday in Arlington, even amid the laughs.
“Best Red Smith speech I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of them,” one journalist said as he shook hands with Shaughnessy as the luncheon ended.
Said another: “Thanks for showing us how it’s done.”
Courtney Shultz is a Deputy Managing Editor at The Athletic and an APSE Foundation Leadership Fellow.
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