Seattle Times sports columnist Matt Calkins resigns over spiked transgender athletes column
Matt Calkins, a sports columnist at The Seattle Times for 11 years, announced his resignation Thursday after the paper declined to publish his column supporting Sophie Cunningham's stance on transgender athletes in sports. Calkins said the decision prevented him from fulfilling his role as a columnist.
Matt Calkins, a sports columnist at The Seattle Times for 11 years, announced his resignation on Thursday, August 20, according to Awful Announcing reporting. The departure came after the paper declined to publish a column Calkins had written from the perspective of two female student athletes opposed to competing against biological males.
Calkins submitted the column draft, titled "Agreeing with Sophie Cunningham's stance doesn't make you transphobic," to his editor on Friday, July 31. After receiving multiple editorial notes that the piece was still under review, Calkins learned the following Thursday afternoon that it would not run. The Seattle Times told Calkins the column would not run because he had not informed editors about it in advance. Calkins stated he did not believe this explanation.
The column's subject stemmed from a "Support Sophie Cunningham" rally held during an Indiana Fever game against the Seattle Storm in Seattle the previous month. Cunningham, an Indiana Fever player, had published comments on ESPN stating she wanted to "protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men." One of the two female student athletes featured in Calkins' column was 16-year-old Ahnaleigh Wilson, who reportedly was cursed out by Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton for sitting courtside and holding a sign expressing support for Cunningham.
The declined column was one of several pieces of Calkins' that The Seattle Times had spiked, according to Awful Announcing. Calkins resigned immediately after learning the column would not run and subsequently published it himself on his Substack.
In a statement to Awful Announcing, Calkins said: "I've always thought that it was a columnist's duty to generate discussion on the most hot-button issues. To avoid such topics was to leave the reader shortchanged. I guess in the end, I just didn't feel like I could do my job properly anymore." He added that he has "no idea how the next few months or years are going to play out." Clay Travis later invited Calkins to reach out about a possible job at his newly launched media venture.
As of Thursday afternoon, The Seattle Times had not publicly responded to Calkins' resignation or addressed his characterization of the editorial decision.
Calkins resigned immediately after learning The Seattle Times would not run a column he wrote from the perspective of female athletes opposed to competing against biological males.
The sources do not carry The Seattle Times' explanation for why it spiked this or other Calkins columns beyond the stated reason about advance notice, nor have they provided a full list of other pieces the paper declined to publish. What comes next is whether the paper issues a statement on its editorial rationale and how other regional outlets address the collision between editorial independence and cultural controversy.
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Single-source report. As published, only awfulannouncing.com had reported this development. No independent outlet had corroborated it.
Also reported by Seattle Red, Mediaite, Yahoo Sports, Freedom For All Americans. Independent coverage of the same development, found by search; not this story's sources.
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