Angles with John Richmond

Ep58: Matt Fairburn - The Athletic, Beat Reporting, and What He Sees Inside Buffalo’s Teams

John Richmond Episode 58

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0:00 | 1:10:20

John sits down with Matt Fairburn, staff writer at The Athletic covering the Buffalo Sabres and one of the most trusted voices in Western New York sports media. Matt has covered both the Bills and the Sabres across his career, spending years at Syracuse.com before joining The Athletic at its Buffalo launch in 2018. He’s a Boston kid who came to Buffalo for a job, met his wife here, and stayed. This conversation is not really about the state of the teams. It’s about what it actually takes to do this job at a high level.

 

Matt talks about building source relationships as a long game, how the Kevin Adams accountability piece came together over eight months and what it was like to sit across from Adams before it published, and what he has observed about organizational culture and leadership from years of watching two major sports franchises succeed and fail. He also covers the Sabres’ playoff run, the GM change that shifted everything, Brandon Beane and the pressure on the Bills, and where journalism is going as the written word competes with video, AI, and a fragmented media landscape. 

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