Veteran sports columnist Matt Calkins has resigned from The Seattle Times, ending an 11-year stint after the newspaper declined to publish a column he wrote about Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham and transgender participation in women’s sports.
As a nationally recognised columnist with more than two decades in journalism, Calkins may have earned above average. Calkins then moved to The Columbian. There he worked as a Portland Trail Blazers and a general sports columnist. The piece centered on two female student-athletes who opposed competing against transgender athletes assigned male at birth. The piece followed interviews outside a Seattle Storm game, where supporters gathered to thank Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham after she publicly opposed biological males competing in girls’ and women’s sports. Another athlete, Frances Staudt, shared similar views after refusing to compete against a biological male in basketball.
The Seattle Times’ columnists earn an average annual salary of about $81,299, though compensation varies depending on experience, seniority and responsibilities, according to Indeed’s data insight. He began covering high school sports at the Riverside Press-Enterprise in 2004, according to his Seattle Times profile. The sports buff then started his career officially at The Press-Enterprise, where he worked for 6 years as a sports columnist.
He wrote on Substack describing it as his new “space” and said, “The plan for now is to keep writing in this space. In a lengthy Substack essay , Calkins said the final trigger for his resignation was the newspaper’s refusal to publish one of his columns. Calkins wrote that one teenager, Ahnaleigh Wilson, told him she was not anti-trans despite opposing transgender participation in female sports.
