Kevin B. Blackistone (born October 17, 1959) is a columnist for Fanhouse.com, also a frequent panelist for ESPN's Around the Horn and on Sundays for Comcast's Redskins Postgame Live. On radio, he appears as a frequent guest cohost on the Sports Reporters on DC's ESPN980.
He was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Hyattsville, Maryland, and started his career in journalism as a city side reporter at The Boston Globe newspaper, after graduating from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1981. In 1983, he wrote for The Chicago Reporter, a monthly investigative magazine on Chicago's racial and social issues. In 1986, Blackistone joined The Dallas Morning News newspaper as a reporter in the City section; he later moved to the Business section covering economics, and the Metropolitan section covering city events and issues.
After covering Nelson Mandela's U.S. tour in 1990, he moved to SportsDay to cover sports business and write columns. A year later, he became a full-time SportsDay columnist.
In September 2006, Blackistone was one of 111 journalists to accept a buyout offer from the News, forcing his departure from the newspaper on September 15, 2006. Editor Bob Mong, in an article on the buyouts, wrote of Blackistone: "His thoughtful and probing journalism almost always stimulated response from readers, and, in this hyper-busy world, that's saying something."
Blackistone recently has served as a contributing writer to the web site Politico.com. He still appears on Around the Horn and recently began writing a column for AOL Sports. [1] Also, in August 2008, he accepted the position of the Shirley Povich chair of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, where he now teaches.
Blackistone is currently an independent columnist and left Fanhouse.com when it was bought by The Sporting News.
Blackistone is a graduate of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School.
Blackistone's several honors include first- and second-place awards for sports column writing from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors (APME), a Chicago Newspaper Guild award for investigative reporting, and a National Association of Black Journalists award for enterprise reporting. He was also a member of a team that won a Texas APME award and, several times, a finalist for a Press Club of Dallas Katie Award.