Jonathan Northcroft

Last updated

Jonathan Northcroft is a Scottish sports journalist and author. He is currently the Chief Football Writer for The Sunday Times .

Contents

Education

Northcroft first attended Newtonhill Primary School, where he regularly turned class writing assignments into yet another opportunity to write on football. His earliest effort came at the age of six with his review of the 1978 FIFA World Cup, entitled 'The Caterpillar Who Went to Argentina'. For his Secondary schooling he went to Mackie Academy, Stonehaven, where he left as Dux in 1990. Northcroft graduated with an MA in English literature from the University of Edinburgh in 1993. He then completed a postgraduate diploma in journalism at the Scottish Centre for Journalism Studies.

Career

Northcroft began his career as a trainee news reporter at The Herald in 1995 before he joined Scotland on Sunday . [1] He also wrote for several other publications including The Independent before he was appointed Scottish Football Correspondent by The Sunday Times in 1998.

He was promoted to Northern Football Correspondent in 2001 and then Chief Football Correspondent for The Sunday Times in 2009. Since his appointment, he has authored several notable books, including Manchester United Opus, which he co-wrote with Hugh McIlvanney, Patrick Barclay and Jim White amongst others. [2]

The book gained widespread notability after a copy signed by the Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum was sold at auction for $1.6m, which was a world record price for a sporting publication. [3]

Northcroft then wrote Fearless: How Leicester City Shook the Premier League and What it Means For Sport after Leicester City's surprise Premier League victory in 2016, [4] and Deadlines, and Darts with Dele [5] after he lost a game of darts against England midfielder Dele Alli during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. [6]

He regularly appears on broadcast networks as a pundit, including Sky Sports Sunday Supplement , [7] BT Sport programme Football Writers on TV, [8] BBC Radio 5 Live, [9] [10] RTÉ Radio 1 show Today with Seán O'Rourke , [11] as well numerous appearances on The Times own The Game podcast. [12]

On 10 October 2018 Northcroft was included in a list of the 238 most respected journalists working in Britain as published by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. [13] [14]

Awards

Northcroft was the inaugural winner of the Jim Rodger Memorial Award for young sports writers in Scotland. During his career at The Sunday Times, he was shortlisted for Feature Writer of the Year at the British Sports Journalism Awards in 2006 and for Football Writer of the Year in 2016 [15] [16] and 2018. [17] He was nominated for Best New Writer at the 2017 British Sports Book Awards, [18] [19] and nominated for Writer of the Year at the 2018 Football Supporters Federation Awards. [20]

Personal life

Since childhood Northcroft has been a supporter of Aberdeen FC. [21] He followed the team while Alex Ferguson was manager. He grew up in a sporting household and was encouraged from an early age to take an active interest in football and cricket. As a footballer her became a valued regular midfielder for Stonehaven Juveniles and then Edinburgh University. In his professional life he has appeared many times for the Scottish Journalists' Eleven and was once 'Man of the Match' at Wembley when his team triumphed over their English counterparts. For his cricket he appeared for Aberdeen Colts and also for his father's team in Aberdeen, Balmoral CC. As an adult he was a regular for Sefton Sunday Elevens in Liverpool, where he acted as a consistent if underachieving, batsman, succeeding in getting into the forties many times but never managing to go any further. He was present to witness Botham's Headingley 'Miracle' in 1981. He now lives in Leicester, is married to Jan and is father to two daughters.

Related Research Articles

The Scottish Football Writers' Association (SFWA) is an association of Scottish football journalists and correspondents writing for newspapers and agencies. It was founded in 1965.

Henry Winter is an English sports journalist. He currently writes for World Soccer, having previously been the Chief Football Writer for The Times and a Football Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Leventhal</span> English TV presenter

Adam Leventhal is an English broadcaster, television presenter and journalist.

Catriona Shearer is a Scottish broadcast journalist and producer, who was a presenter on BBC Scotland's national news programme Reporting Scotland.

Jim Munro is a British journalist and newspaper website editor. He is currently Executive Sports Editor of The Sun's online edition and writes for the paper.

Will Lyons is a journalist, newspaper columnist, award-winning wine writer and broadcaster. He is most widely known for his writing in The Wall Street Journal and The Sunday Times.

The Sports Journalists' Association (SJA) is an association for British sports journalists. It represents the British sports media on the British Olympic Association's press advisory committee and acts as a consultant to organizers of major events who need guidance on media requirements as well as seeking to represent its members' interests in a range of activities. Its president is Patrick Collins, the distinguished former sports columnist for The Mail on Sunday, who succeeded veteran broadcaster and columnist Sir Michael Parkinson in the role. Membership is open to journalists, photographers, broadcasters, reporters, editors, and cartoonists. However, in order to obtain a full membership you have to be a journalist based in the United Kingdom.

Neil Atkinson is a Liverpool-based writer, broadcaster and film producer. He is the host, Content Manager, and one of the main writers and business developers behind online football and culture magazine The Anfield Wrap which has had more than 28 million podcast downloads worldwide. Atkinson has presented sell-out shows of The Anfield Wrap in London, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Ireland and Scandinavia, as well as on stage at the Sound City Festival in Liverpool. Atkinson co-wrote and co-produced the film Native, which had a theatrical release in the UK in 2018 and won the feature film award at the 2016 Boston science fiction festival. Described as "smart" and "elegant" by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Kim Newman in Empire magazine described it as "ambitious, unusual and thought-provoking". In The Times, Ed Potton wrote that it was a "script full of promise, with provocative things to say about empathy, obedience and individualism".

The Anfield Wrap is a collective of podcasts, radio shows, videocasts, live shows, magazine and website articles predominantly about Liverpool F.C. as well as the culture and music in the city of Liverpool.

<i>The Totally Football Show</i> British football podcast

The Totally Football Show presented by James Richardson is a thrice weekly podcast about association football produced by Muddy Knees Media. From June 15, 2020 it was incorporated into and also available via The Athletic. It regularly features on lists of the best association football podcasts.

Barney Ronay is an English journalist and author. He is the chief sports writer for The Guardian, and has regularly appeared on The Guardian's Football Weekly podcast and at the Football Weekly live shows. He has also written for the New Statesman, When Saturday Comes, The Cricketer, and The Blizzard.

Rory Smith is an English journalist, broadcaster and author. He joined The Athletic in 2024 having previously been the chief soccer correspondent of The New York Times from 2016. Smith is a former journalist of The Times, The Independent, and The Daily Telegraph.

Jonathan Liew is an American sportswriter for The Guardian. Liew has been named the sports writer of the year, and sports columnist of the year, at the annual SJA Awards.

The Game podcast is a free to download association football podcast produced by The Times newspaper and co-hosted during the 2018-19 season by Natalie Sawyer and Gabriele Marcotti.

The Indy Football Podcast is a weekly football podcast produced by The Independent.

Ed Malyon is a British sports media executive and writer who was most recently Managing Director of UK Operations for The Athletic. He was formerly the sports editor of The Independent and the weekend football editor of the Daily Mirror.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miguel Delaney</span> Football journalist and author in Ireland

Miguel Delaney is a Spanish-Irish football journalist and author. He is the chief football writer at The Independent.

Matt Lawton is an English sports journalist who is currently the chief sports correspondent for The Times newspaper. He was previously the chief sports reporter for the Daily Mail.

The British Sports Journalism Awards is an annual ceremony organised by the Sports Journalists' Association that recognise the best of sports journalism in Britain in the previous calendar year. The awards are widely considered the BAFTAs of the industry, and attract entries from all major domestic and international media outlets.

Sam Wallace is a British sports journalist, the Chief Football Writer at the Daily and Sunday Telegraph since 2015. In 2021, he was the recipient of the Scoop of the Year and Football Journalist of the Year at the SJA Awards, as well as the Hugh McIlvanney Sports Journalist of the Year and Sport News Story of the Year at The Press Awards.

References

  1. ↑ "An interview with football correspondent Jonathan Northcroft". It's Round and It's White. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  2. ↑ "WIN A COPY OF THE REMARKABLE MANCHESTER UNITED OPUS". Daily Mirror . 18 May 2007.
  3. ↑ "Man Utd gets into the record books with $1.6m book". Independent.co.uk . 4 November 2007.
  4. ↑ "Fearless". www.goodreads.com.
  5. ↑ "NEW BOOK: Deadlines and Darts with Dele".
  6. ↑ "Archived copy". MSN . Archived from the original on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 31 October 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. ↑ "Jonathan Northcroft from the Sunday Times believes Liverpool are making a huge mistake by letting Steven Gerrard go at the end of the season". www.skysports.com.
  8. ↑ "Football Writers Podcast by Pixiu on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts.
  9. ↑ "Sport - In Short - BBC Radio 5 Live". BBC.
  10. ↑ "5 live Sport Specials". podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk.
  11. ↑ "Health And Technology". RTÉ Radio 1. 29 October 2018.
  12. ↑ "The Game Football Podcast". rss.acast.com.
  13. ↑ "A list of the 238 most respected journalists, as nominated by journalists in the 2018 Journalists at Work survey" (PDF). National Council for the Training of Journalists .[ permanent dead link ]
  14. ↑ "NCTJ publish list of 238 'most respected journalists' but what about the red tops? – Sports Journalists' Association". www.sportsjournalists.co.uk. 22 October 2018.
  15. ↑ "Media Awards: British Sports Journalism Awards (print) 2015, shortlist - allmediascotland…media jobs, media release service and media resources for all". www.allmediascotland.com.
  16. ↑ "New faces, old names and shortlist surprises – Sports Journalists' Association". www.sportsjournalists.co.uk. 28 January 2016.
  17. ↑ "British Sports Journalism Awards 2018: writing shortlists – Sports Journalists' Association". 31 January 2019.
  18. ↑ "Sports Book Awards - Jonathan Northcroft". sportsbookawards.com.
  19. ↑ "Hill, Wright, Rutherford and Pavey go head to head in Cross Sports Book Awards - The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com.
  20. ↑ "FSF Awards 2018 shortlists announced - Football Supporters' Federation". www.fsf.org.uk. 31 October 2018.
  21. ↑ Storey, Daykin &. "Subscriptions - theBlizzard.co.uk". www.theblizzard.co.uk.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.