We at The National are selecting — and writing about — the planet’s best places to see a sports event.
Stadiums, arenas, race tracks (horse and motors), even a “Gulf.”
This was the idea of Robert Mashburn, the sports editor here, who had a brainstorm a few months back to rank the top 10 venues in the […]

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My newspaper, The National, here in Abu Dhabi, has one of those “most-read” lists on its website. One for each department. News. Business.
Sports.
These lists are handy, whatever the news outlet. It allows you to discover quickly which stories are getting clicked on most often, and lets you catch up to stuff you might not […]

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It’s chaos over there in the States, right? Owners and general managers ricocheting around the country chasing LeBron James and the other NBA free agents as of 12:01 EDT Thursday, trying to bundle up enough cash to sign Bron-Bron and all those other guys.
We here at The National, in the United Arab Emirates, are interested […]

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Great day … I am back in sports journalism.
I have transferred from the news desk at The National, here in Abu Dhabi, to the sports department. And so far it’s been rather like going home again.
Even if “home” now includes quite a lot of cricket and rugby for what is, at heart, a British sports […]

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It’s vacation! Not a change of laptop viewing venues!
The three of us clearly didn’t get the memo.
We had just had a very nice dinner of pesce spada (swordfish) for me, risotto con scampi for Leah and spaghetti vongale (pasta and clams) for Liz at one of the nicer restaurants in our little town of Massa […]

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I work at a newspaper that appears to have seven guys named Paul in its newsroom. Seven.
And what makes things, uh, interesting … is that at the moment three of those seven Pauls work within three yards of each other. One of them is directly behind me and another faces him on the other side […]

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My friend and former colleague Steve Dilbeck now blogs about the Dodgers for the Los Angeles Times.
I would like to read Steve’s blog. I would also like to read a blog about the Dodgers.
The trouble?
None of the latimes.com blogs will load. Zero. Sports, politics, news. None can be called up.
The people who run the website […]

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Another rough year for the economy. The world economy, the national, the state …
People losing jobs. Unemployment of, what, 12.5 percent in California? Something like 10 percent in the nation? Even higher, when you include people who have stopped looking for work and the scads of people not fully employed.
U.S. print journalism is still in […]

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We are spending the day today … and Friday … traveling to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for, yes, jobs.
Journalism jobs. Print journalism jobs.
We hardly believe it, either, but after the events of the past 10 weeks, this all seems  like one irresistible tide of fate. Just when we were unhappily preparing to […]

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A real “man bites dog” story. News, that is.
David T. Bristow, former San Bernardino Sun sports staffer, was sworn in Friday as a federal magistrate judge for the U.S. Central District Court.
Yes. Our David Bristow, former Sun agate clerk and the guy who covered, home and road, the historic first season of the San Bernardino […]

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