Scott Silverstein

A man of inaction and reaction but not action. Likes cupcakes. Former sports copy chief and assignment editor at The Washington Post who needs a job.

[Churchill track and field and cross country @WCHSXCTrack]

Girls did it again! 9:16.49 to break the school record for the second straight day!

[Churchill track and field and cross country @WCHSXCTrack]

School record. Third in their heat. 9:17.95. Penn Relays final.

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

The comma between disco and occasionally really bugs me.

[Churchill track and field and cross country @WCHSXCTrack]

Laura scored in all three events at her conference meet, including second-place finishes in the 200 and 4x400!

[Jason Murray @JasonMurray117]

With the Olympics done, my time at The Post is also done. It’s been an amazing five-plus years. The people I worked with weren’t just supremely talented, they were also great humans. This was truly a dream job and I’m eternally grateful I got this opportunity.

[Churchill track and field and cross country @WCHSXCTrack]

Boys finish as the state runners-up!!!!

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

Someone just tweeted at me: “learn to code, jew” …. Man, people are racist assholes.

[Greg Schimmel @Greg_Schimmel]

I started in The Washington Post's Sports section when I was 18, answering phones when people still called in their high school football box scores. I leave knowing we did a lot of great work with a lot of great people since then.

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

@Drubaru Thanks! Feels like I have been through this before unfortunately!

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

After 13 years, my job at The Washington Post was eliminated this morning. Best place I ever worked. If anyone needs a good editor who writes snappy headlines, let me know …

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

@john_keim Thanks. Let me know if you need me to fix up ESPN for you. Ha!

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

@danWorthington It lived for a long time after you left …

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

It is amazing how nasty some people are when you lose your job. But only an idiot responds with learn to code.

[Barry Svrluga @barrysvrluga]

So, finally, some thoughts on @PostSports:

I, like so many of my colleagues, was laid off today as part of the Post’s implosion of its Sports department. I ache for my colleagues, so many of whom are friends and so many of whom I’ve worked so closely with over 22+ years here.

[Chelsea Janes @chelsea_janes]

I, like so many people I respect and love, was laid off today. What an incredible honor it was to spend 12 years there. I am so grateful for everyone who read and encouraged and lived seasons with us. I am so sad the Post sports family won’t be there to live it with you again.

[Kareem Copeland @kareemcopeland]

Another vet hitting unrestricted free agency..
I don't mean to be flippant, yall, just don't quite have the words right now.
Include my position as one of the many eliminated today. I'll always be thankful for 8 years at a place I never thought I'd be, and for everyone that read and followed along.
Now we keep hustlin, like always.

[Molly Hensley-Clancy @mollyhc]

Hi everyone, it's been a bit, but you all should know I was laid off today along with the entire Washington Post sports desk. I am utterly heartbroken. This was my dream job, and I gave it everything I had. I am also very angry.

[Nicky Wolcott @nickywolcott]

Like many others today, my time at The Washington Post is over. It was an absolute dream to share pages with so many past and present greats (and friends!) while working on a team so dedicated to covering local high school sports and the athletes who make them so special here.

[Chuck Culpepper @ChuckCulpepper1]

So on the 4,167th and final day of a job so exhilarating that I'd swear at least 4,000 of the days qualified as very good or better, the coffee came with whooshing thoughts of the 11 years and the four months and the 27 days.

The brain tore through the datelines from 17 countries and 43 states, the three World Cups, the four Olympics, the 10 tennis majors, the 20 golf majors, the 11 men's Finals Four, the 28 College Football Playoff games, the 10 Kentucky Derbys, the tour of Jordan-Oman-Kuwait-United Arab Emirates, the 46 days in the peerless Australia -- I mean, come on, really? -- the depth of the beauty of South Koreans, and those times when I looked in the mirror (briefly) and saw a lunatic.

Maybe the looniest would be covering a game in Seattle on a Friday night, then a game in Clemson on that Saturday night (with Lamar Jackson on the field looking even more dizzying than usual). Or was it the Boise on a Friday night, the students swimming into the frigid river for a goal-post chunk after midnight, then the one hour of sleep, then the Indianapolis on a Saturday night? No, wait, wait, it had to be this: Novak Djokovic winning the French Open in Paris on Sunday early evening, then U.S. Open golf preparations starting on Tuesday . . .

. . . in Los Angeles.

Non-deranged people might find such a sequence unfair; for whatever metabolic reason, I just kept giggling.

Well, something surpassed all of that, somehow. To be part of the Washington Post Sports department was to be a part of an exemplary human experience, a rarefied collegiality, a beacon of collaboration and a near-bewildering scarcity of envy. For just one thing, I never, ever thought, way back last century, that I'd inhabit a world and a staff where everyone would treat my husband as one of the group, where a deputy sports editor would say, in a kitchen, near the end of a holiday party, "Alfonso! Come over here and hug me!" All of it reinforced that on the medal stand of life, human collaboration deserves a spot and maybe even the gold, for its curious capacity to bolster seemingly all 35 trillion of our cells.

I love these forever teammates all so much it probably annoys them, and they call to mind a relic of a show always worth unearthing. It's Episode 168 of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," the episode she titled, "The Last Show," when the WJM newsroom staff works a final news show and has a last group hug, and Mary wishes to emote, and Lou wishes not to emote, but then Mary gives a stirring speech and then the ever-gruff Lou relents and, in a quaking voice, says something resonant all the way clear into February 2026:

"I treasure you people."

[Scott Silverstein @trackcoach1]

@ByVarunShankar You made the right move!

[Tom Schad @Tom_Schad]

As an employee, this is gutting. As a longtime reader, it is devastating.

So much of what I learned and admired about sports journalism came from reading The Post. Working there was a dream. Just wish it would've lasted more than 5 months.