MARKSELIG

I'm especially thankful for Mark's guidance. I could write 30 inches about his many strengths, but instead, I will focus on two anecdotes of how he made us better.

The first was our preseason Jayden Daniels profile. I was worried because I had spent months reporting, and we had never worked together on a big project. He pushed hard in edits: cut extra names, sharpen this section, cut this section entirely. We were in the doc basically all Labor Day weekend, and in the end, I realized he was right about pretty much everything. We published what turned out to be a tight, insightful profile that didn't just tell Jayden's life story but foreshadowed how he would become the NFL's next huge star.

The second is his initiative. I've never worked with an editor who is as proactive as he was in involving other sections and learning about the source material firsthand. When Jayden blew up, he suggested using the No. 5 jersey as a symbol of his impact in a social video. When I wanted to do a visual breakdown of Terry McLaurin's signature skill, he coordinated a meeting with graphics to help it come to life. When I wrote about an obscure Samoan card game, he played it with his wife to learn the rules and coordinated an awesome illustration.

When I started working for Mark, he could have justifiably treated me as an annoyance. My former national NFL editor had left the Post, and Mark overtook responsibility for me without losing any of his many other obligations. To make matters more onerous, our two local NFL reporters left. He suddenly had to navigate a new beat while hiring crucial replacements.

Mark made an unfair job look easy. His editing eye bailed me out from mistakes and improved my copy. He helped me rework my lede on a story about an NFL super agent, found the right nut graf on a story about an aging quarterback and recommended just the right angle for an NFC championship game story. Mark is sharp, diligent, adaptable and reliable. He is the kind of editor any news organization wants to hire and any writer wants to work for.

Mark struck the ideal balance as my assigning editor for years, with the ability to allow his writers the freedom to report and write with voice and authority while also offering insight and, ultimately, editing to construct the best possible stories and projects.

For a writer with the tendency to go long and sometimes get too broad, Mark was always able to pare down and streamline without losing the essence of pieces.

A recent example was our enterprise story: “ACL tears keep sidelining women’s basketball stars. What’s going on?” The piece was constructed over months with in-depth reporting and a wide array of sources. Mark skillfully identified areas that were either overwritten or strayed too far from the main topic. He possesses the ability to work with and challenge writers without being confrontational or re-writing copy in his own voice. The process was always truly collaborative, which was much appreciated.

Mark also excels at allowing his writers to pitch and develop story ideas while adding his thoughts that further enrich the story. His line-by-line editing is always clean without losing the tone and voice of the writer. Additionally, Mark is always open to a conversation if he and a writer disagree. Those are not confrontational conversations, rather discussions with the underlying goal of simply putting together the best read possible.

I will miss working with him on a daily basis. I developed into a better writer working with Mark as we continually expanded our coverage of women’s basketball and were competitive on a national level with anyone operating in that space.

You can track my growth as a journalist from the intensity of Mark’s edits. The Washington Post’s content system highlighted omissions in yellow, and when Mark first edited me — he’d hired me to write about high school field hockey as a college sophomore — the color covered my drafts.

I was raw and my copy reflected it. Mark helped me learn what were the morsels of color that built a scene and what merely made a story longer. He encouraged me to experiment with nonchronological story structures to maximize reader attention.

The yellow markings grew rarer as his writing advice set in, evidence of my growth as a journalist — growth he helped spark.

His impact spread beyond copy. I could always bounce story ideas off Mark. He struck the right balance between encouraging ambitious work but asking the right questions to direct further reporting.

It’s worth noting, high school editing was an additional duty Mark picked up along with his work as a multiplatform editor for The Post’s sports section, tasking him to work with younger reporters who needed more guidance. He never treated it like a part-time job.

At the end of the fall and spring high school seasons, Mark gave us the option to sign up for feedback sessions. He asked us to first evaluate ourselves with a rubric he then filled out. My first review with him generated sharp feedback that still informs my work. Mark told me to think like an editor, planning coverage in a cohesive and organized way rather than jumping from story to story.

Eventually, The Post recognized the talent they had and hired him as an assignment editor overseeing coverage of local sports — including the Washington Wizards. He hired me as the team’s beat reporter, tasking me with immense responsibility just a few months after I’d graduated college.

The Wizards were intentionally trying to lose, making for an unconventional beat. Mark encouraged me to experiment with new ways to gain audience when covering such a team, including varying game coverage formats, data stories and social videos.

The Wizards’ management were a difficult combination of secretive and sensitive. At 22, I wasn’t always equipped to handle such an unpredictable and fluid relationship. Mark was instrumental in me doing so, acting as a sounding board and guide as we smoothed over various issues the team had with coverage.

No editor has been as impactful to my career as Mark. I’m not alone in that. He took great care to make his reporters and our coverage better every single day.

Mark was my editor for the first two years of my journalism career, a stretch where I know he was far more thoughtful in his advice than most are to recent college grads. Around that time, I had a handful of elements that told me I might belong at the Washington Post; I had a voice, a bunch of loose ideas and ambition, but no sense of how to turn that into coherent, ambitious journalism. Mark changed that, and he did so in a way that stuck.

When I wrote about grieving high school athletes, it was Mark who helped me determine which anecdotes and throughlines belonged in the piece, and helped me approach each idea (and sentence, for that matter) with the delicacy the story demanded.

Time and time again, when I approached traditional aspects of the beat — items like notebooks and gamers that could have been seen as secondary to lengthier feature coverage — Mark shaped my idea of what “excellence” should look like, pushing me to narrow my angles, think outside the box and make the extra call.

He also nailed the more mundane parts of the job. Fact-checking high school coverage can be an impossibility, and yet, Mark repeatedly caught ticky-tack mistakes that only someone with profound care for the work could have caught. He was patient without letting me off the hook and creative without letting my ideas become tangents, as I know they would have without his help.

I know editors and writers are supposed to butt heads, but we never did — he challenged me, and it always felt as though it was coming from a place of respect. In short, Mark taught me how to be the reporter I’ve become. I’d love to work with him again if I ever got the chance.

I worked with Mark Selig for five-and-a-half years in The Washington Post Sports section. When I joined The Post as an assignment editor, I can remember Mark patiently showing me the ropes as I stumbled through putting together college football roundups during my first weeks.

Of course, in addition to being a copy editor for the print desk, Mark was going above and beyond by being an assignment editor in all but name, leading our high school sports coverage. Mark developed an impressive team of young freelance writers, several of whom went on to become full-time staffers in our department.

Once I became sports editor and we had an opening for an assignment editor, Mark stepped up. He guided our Commanders coverage during their run to the NFC championship game, pushing our reporters for creative content that met the moment for readers. When our national NFL editor left, he took on those duties as well.

Mark’s greatest strength is developing and working reporters of all experience levels. He continuously got the most out of college students and reporters just out of college. He also was able to work with the most experienced of reporters and push them out of their comfort zones to new ways of doing things to meet the digital moment.

Any staff would become instantly improved if they added Mark to their ranks.