New York Times’ Alan Schwarz Continues His Victory Lap Tour

Alan Schwarz, who created the concussion beat at The New York Times but stopped writing about the subject last year, last week did a video interview with the British magazine The Economist about his experience. See http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2011/12/alan-schwarz-concussions-american-football.

(Last summer I reviewed Schwarz’s appearance on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. See “New York Times’ Alan Schwarz Resurfaces in NPR Concussion Dialogue,” September 17, 2011, https://concussioninc.net/?p=4621.)

As always, Schwarz is knowledgeable, measured, and articulate in his remarks for The Economist. Readers of this blog already know that I consider him too soft on the history of what the National Football League has done and not done. I also think Schwarz does not make the point – certainly not with sufficient urgency – that amateur levels of the sport cannot hope to tailor their solutions by viewing the problem through the lens of a $10-billion-a-year marketing colossus.

Finally, the Schwarz journalistic approach, which was invaluable in its day, has failed to move on to discuss how the funding of such consensus solutions not only are doomed to failure, but also bankrupt institutions with other missions – that is, our public high schools.

Irv Muchnick

Look for our upcoming ebook UPMC: Concussion Scandal Ground Zero. Complete info on the Concussion Inc. ebook shorts series is here.