By Michael Murphy

After decades of working in the same profession, some people get tired of their job. Not Kevin Blackistone. 

“I’m an information news junkie,” Blackistone said. 

Blackistone described journalism as his calling. He consumes news all the time, joking that if being a journalist wasn’t an option, “I’d be on the street corner with a sign.”

Along with his career in the newsroom, Blackistone became a professor of the practice at the University of Maryland in 2008. 

A Hyattsville native, Blackistone left Maryland to study journalism at Northwestern University. After graduating, he started as a reporter at the Boston Globe in 1981 before moving to the Chicago Reporter in 1983.

In 1986 he joined the Dallas Morning News, where he began a career in sports journalism and got the opportunity to have his own column. Blackistone spent 20 years at the Dallas Morning News. He left in 2006 to become a columnist for AOL Fanhouse, a sports blog and commentary site operated by AOL that ran from 2005 to 2011.

During this time, he joined ESPN’s Around the Horn as a panelist, the role he is now best known for. Around the Horn was a sports debate show that ran from 2002 to May 2025. He spent 24 years on the show before it ended in 2025, and had a sports column at the Washington Post from 2015 to 2025.  

Despite writing about economics, business, social issues and conducting investigative journalism for years, Blackistone said he is content with being viewed as a sports journalist. 

“I’m not bothered by what the perceptions may be,” he said, adding that he understood being on a weekly ESPN show is naturally what most people recognize him from. 

Ryan Martin, a junior journalism major, described Blackistone as a caring professor. 

“He takes an interest in what you are interested in, which is really cool and not seen super often with people of his resume,” Martin said.

He added that Blackistone gave him a new perspective on covering sports, saying, “It’s so much more than what happens from the first to last whistle.”

But Blackistone’s decades of writing have not come without controversy. He recalled people complaining his writing was too focused on race when he wrote his column for the Dallas Morning News. Blackistone said the vast majority of his writing was not primarily about race, but people were not used to reading about racial issues, making his column stand out. 

Christoph Mergerson, a University of Maryland assistant professor, said Black journalists often deal with this criticism.

“They are given this label of only being interested in race by people who are uncomfortable not only talking about race, but uncomfortable with what black journalists represent, which is equal rights and justice of opportunity,” Mergerson said.

Mergerson also said critiquing journalists like Blackistone for covering racial issues is unreasonable. 

“If someone questions whether or not somebody belongs in the profession because they are covering a story involving race, that speaks more to the critic than to the journalist,” Mergerson said.

Despite the challenges that come with being a Black journalist, Blackistone said his love for the profession has never wavered. He still finds news exciting after all these years, calling it his “heartbeat.” 

Featured Image: A headshot of Kevin Blackistone, professor of the practice at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Photo courtesy of Kate DeBlasis.