After 11 years writing for the Seattle Times, Sports Columnist Matt Calkins announced his resignation Thursday, citing the publication’s spiking of his pro-female athlete story as the last straw of leftist censorship.
“It was entirely my choice, and it was not an easy one,” Calkins explained in a social media post:
“The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to competing against biological males.
“It was one of several pieces of mine that had been spiked, and I no longer felt like I could properly do my job as a columnist.”
Calkins added that he has no animosity towards anyone working at the Times and directed readers to a Substack post providing more details on what compelled him to resign.
The breaking point, Calkins says, was when the Times refused to run a column he submitted titled “Agreeing with Sophie Cunningham’s stance doesn’t make you transphobic” with the subheading “Some of us are way too quick to throw labels around on a sensitive subject.”
“I really wanted the column to run. I didn’t think it would, but I felt obligated to try to get it in,” Calkins begins his “This is why I resigned” Substack post.
Calkins provides a link to the rejected column on Substack, which focuses on two teenage female athletes who have suffered verbal abuse because they believe biological men should not compete in women’s sports.
One of the teens, Ahnaleigh Wilson, was recently at the center of a nationally-covered controversy over the WNBA’s Seattle Storm owner cursing at her for attending a rally supporting Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham, who said in an interview that biological females shouldn’t have to compete against biological males. The other was student-athlete Frances Staudt, who said she was enduring daily verbal abuse after refusing to play against a biological boy in a basketball game.
After his column was routed back and forth among multiple editors, it was ultimately rejected. Calkins says that, while the spiking of that column prompted his resignation, it was just “one of several columns of mine that had been spiked at the Seattle Times.”
Calkins lists the topics of other pieces that the publication refused to run:
- Questioning whether players for the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team were really the victims of discrimination in their equal-pay lawsuit.
- Exploring cancel culture in sports.
- Highlighting a Black basketball coach who urged the public not to stereotype law enforcement in reaction to George Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer.
“The common theme? All of these challenged prevailing newsroom narratives and likely would have triggered the outrage mob,” Calkins says, noting that columnists have an obligation to tackle tough issues:
“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.”
While he faces an uncertain professional future, he’s done “holding back,” Calkins says, ending his Substack post by stressing the importance of open dialogue:
“The best things in life are free — speech being at the top of the list.”
Calkins discusses his resignation at length in an interview on unDIVIDED With Brandi Kruse, embedded below, in which he explains that there are actually several important topics the liberal legacy media are refusing to cover.
