The Brief Reads of Thomas Lake

We are starting a monthly series of briefreads written by some of the most respected bylines to date. It’s a look at how these reporters got to where they are now — at national magazines, writing novels, winning major awards — because they mastered great stories on deadline. We ask: Can you see the evolution of a journalist?

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We start with Thomas Lake: A senior writer for Sports Illustrated wrote his first article for The (Little Falls, N.Y.) Evening Times at 17, according to Nieman Storyboard. “It was a profile of a subscriber on his paper route.” A decade later, in last month’s issue of Sports Illustrated, Lake wrote the "The Boy Who Died of Football," a story that's received effusive praise ever since it reached newsstands.

We scoured the archives to find some of the newspaper clips that helped Lake become a prolific beat writer. Here are a few:

“Rec. Dept. Hopes New Baseball-Like games is a Blast,” The Salem News, April, 28, 2003
A ball, but no diamond. A bat, but no gloves. No second or third base, for that matter. Just first, and it honks when you step on it.

“Life and Death in the animal ER,” The Florida Times-Union, March 20, 2005
Mindy wails. She has a wide red wound above her broken left hind leg. Two dogs put it there. They pinned her to a cactus and tried to tear her apart.

“The mysterious metamorphosis of Ricky Roberts,” The Florida Times-Union, April 16, 2006
About 30 years ago in a brick house near the Trout River, a tortured boy named Ricky Roberts cried out to God.

“Dismembered again,” St. Petersburg Times, September 2, 2007
How does a town become known as Nub City?

“A math student’s uncommon equation,” St. Petersburg Times, October 19, 2008
Michael Rodeman, a growing boy who has not eaten breakfast, would very much like to harvest the wind.

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Post your favorite Thomas Lake briefreads or tweet us @briefreads. Who else's career should we look back at? (Send us the journalist and the briefreads that made the reporter.)

-eddie