When Ken Rosenthal decided that he was going to set out on a career in journalism, television was never in his mind.
It was however, something that his father wanted him to do.
“It was never a goal of mine to be on television,” said Rosenthal. “My Dad used to tell me “Well okay you want to be a sportswriter…fine. But maybe one day you’ll be on television”,” said Rosenthal.
“I would say Dad I’m not going on television. I don’t want to be the guy on the 11 o’clock news reading for two minutes. That’s not my idea of what I want to do.”
But that would eventually be what would happen…not reading the sports news on television for two minutes, but a career in sports journalism that also included a television component.
Rosenthal joined FOX Sports in 2005 as a reporter for their Major League Baseball telecasts and coupled with his writing job with the Athletic, he’s got the best of both worlds going on.
“I’m extremely fortunate to have the opportunities that I do,” said Rosenthal who was also an in-studio reporter for MLB Network from 2009 to 2022.
“I don’t ever overlook that or forget it or take it for granted. Every week when I go on FOX for the broadcast, I think to myself it’s unbelievable that I get to do this and I’m really lucky. I never ever thought the television part would become part of it.”
Rosenthal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 and promptly began his career at the York Daily Record before moving on to the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In 1987, he landed a full-time position at The Baltimore Sun in 1987, a job he would have until 2000 when he joined The Sporting News.
The ironic aspect of Rosenthal’s career was that he didn’t aspire to be a sports writer. His goal was to have a career in journalism, specifically on the print side.
“I wasn’t necessarily inspired to get into sports,” said Rosenthal. I wanted to work for a newspaper.
Rosenthal, a huge fan of the NHL’s New York Islanders, grew up on Long Island and was a summer intern for Newsday following his sophomore and junior years of college. The graduate of Oyster Bay High School admired the work of New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica as well as New York Post basketball writer Peter Vecsey, but he was also enjoyed the writing of Jimmy Breslin, a famous news columnist for the New York Daily News.
“I did know early on that I wanted to be a journalist,” said Rosenthal. “I didn’t know that I wanted to be a sportswriter until I got to Penn when I went to school. Basically, you had to choose between sports and news. I chose sports because I liked the guys better. The whole thing is kind of an accident.”
Some accident!
Rosenthal has carved out a wonderful career in sports and that includes both print and electronic. As his journey evolved, so has the technology and the way that sports fans get their information. A big part of that is Twitter and it’s through that platform that Rosenthal, just like many other sports reporters, breaks news just seconds after he learns of it.
But Twitter wasn’t something that Rosenthal was interested in getting involved in early on but he was eventually convinced that it would have to become part of his toolbox.
“I remember at one point, and this must have been late 2000s, I didn’t really want to go on Twitter…I thought it was kind of dumb,” said Rosenthal. “The guys at MLB Trade Rumors said we’re not going to read your stories…we don’t have time to do that. If you want to get credit for your work, you have to put it on Twitter. I felt kind of funny about that but they were right.”
For Rosenthal, there is a small semblance of satisfaction that comes with breaking a story on Twitter, but as he sees it, it’s not the end all be all.
That’s because once one reporter breaks a story these days, there are others who will almost immediately and eventually join the party.
“The Twitter part of it is to me a little old at this point and kind of a situation where you really can’t win,” said Rosenthal. “If I break a story on Twitter, it’s my own for two minutes before someone else confirms it. That’s not where it’s at for me.”
Rosenthal continues to break stories on Twitter and excels in his role with the MLB on FOX. But, his first love is writing and that’s the platform that The Athletic has given him.
In his heart of hearts, Rosenthal loves to tell stories…long-form stories and not 280 characters on Twitter.
Like breaking the Houston Astros cheating story that he wrote in 2019.
“It wasn’t a goal to set out and do a story like that,” said Rosenthal. “We did it and we ran into it but that story, no one could touch. You couldn’t confirm that in two minutes. That is more the goal right now then breaking a transaction on Twitter. I really prefer to write an actual story. In my view, that’s how you win now.”
Rosenthal joined The Athletic when it launched in 2017 and it signaled a new era in sports journalism. The newspaper business hasn’t been doing very well, but The Athletic was a new venture that came along at the right time when sports fans would get a lot of their news on a mobile device.
Again, the best of both worlds in a way for Rosenthal. Sports fans could read an actual story but just needed a little technology to be able to do it.
“I love The Athletic,” said Rosenthal. “It’s been the best in my career in many ways. It’s been the most fulfilling from a print standpoint for sure because we’ve built something very special in my opinion and built it almost from scratch and built it at a time when there was this pivot to this video movement going on and people thinking that print was, if not dead, was certainly not what it was going to be and that really bothered me.”
Something else that bothered Rosenthal at first but has certainly worked out since then occurred in 2010.
Rosenthal was getting ready to work the National League Division Series between the Phillies and Giants when David Hill, then the head of FOX Sports, decided that Rosenthal was going to wear a bowtie on the telecast.
“I didn’t understand it,” said Rosenthal. “I didn’t like it. I thought it was dumb and borderline insulting because to me it was always the work that was supposed to stand out and not the appearance.”
“What I didn’t understand was that television is different and that his idea was simply just to distinguish me in a way that was different than my reporting or work distinguishing me. All these years later, quite obviously, he was right.”
Following that postseason, Rosenthal, at first, thought he was done wearing the bowtie…but he wasn’t.
Former NFL linebacker Dhani Jones had just launched an initiative called “Bowtie Cause” that designed bowties for charitable organizations around the country and reached out to Rosenthal.
“He said we want you to wear our bowties,” said Rosenthal. “My first reaction was no I’m not doing this. I’m not wearing the bowties anymore. And then cooler head prevailed and I figured out that FOX is still going to want me to do this and I might as well get some semblance of control over it. And that’s really how it started and I never imagined that it would become a thing and something that did identify me. Now, if I make an appearance on television without a bowtie, people will say hey where’s the bowtie.”
Rosenthal has certainly accomplished a lot in his career, but while he still has a lot of gas left in tank with what he’s doing now he does have one long-term objective that he’d like to conquer somewhere along the line.
“The one thing I guess I would like to do is write a book about all the things I’ve experienced in my career but that’s not going to happen for a long time,” said Rosenthal.
That’s because Ken Rosenthal, even though he may call it an accident, is still enjoying the best of both worlds in his sports journalism career.
Peter Schwartz writes weekly sports radio features for Barrett Media. He has been involved in New York sports media for over three decades, and has worked for notable brands such as WFAN, CBS Sports Radio, WCBS 880, ESPN New York, and FOX News Radio. Peter has also served as play by play announcer for the New Yok Riptide, New York Dragons, New York Hitmen, Varsity Media and the Long Island Sports Network. You can find him on Twitter @SchwartzSports or email him at DragonsRadio@aol.com.
