 |
Overholt is prepping massive coverage efforts for
the upcoming Women's World Cup |
Name: Alison Overholt
Position: espnW Editor-in-Chief
Age: 38
Where I’m from: Westchester, N.Y.
Where I call home: West Hartford, Conn.
Focusing on right now: The Women's World Cup. We're prepping a massive effort, with espnW leading a coordinated coverage plan across digital, social, TV and print.
Best advice: Always be curious. Just to go into every situation looking to learn something. Always be curious about learning about people, figuring out what their story is, what are the skills that I can learn that’s new today and this week, this month, this year.
Must for a new hire: Intellectual curiosity. I also look for people who seem open and engaging to other people. In our business, it’s so important to be able to draw stories out of other people and to draw ideas out of other people. I was reading an interview with MARK ZUCKERBERG where he said that the number one thing when hiring is if he would work for that person. That’s also been on my mind a lot.
Exec I admire most: My very first boss in journalism was GEORGE ANDERS from the Wall Street Journal. He hired me when I was at Fast Company. He has a very cerebral and thoughtful way of approaching anything; a very measured way of making decisions and evaluating talent and opportunities. Whenever I’m looking for someone to shake me out of my tendencies to go at things at warp speed, I check in with him.
Best book I’ve read: I’m a die-hard science-fiction fan. I read “The Martian” by ANDY WEIR and just loved it. What I love about all science-fiction books is there’s usually some thread about how you handle pressure, and usually some thread about how creative of a problem solver can you be. That book was written with this incredible dry humor. Some people have told me the most creative things happen when you’re very definitively stuck inside a box and you have to figure out how to innovate. I loved “The Martian” for that reason, because this guy is stuck on Mars and has to figure out how to survive and how to get home.
First thing in the morning: I have a 4-year-old, MADDIE, so my first thing usually depends on if she wakes up before me. Sometimes the first thing I do is open my eyes and realize there’s a 4-year-old staring at me waiting to go watch "DRAGON TALES." But if I wake up before everyone else, I’ll usually check Facebook, grab a coffee and sneak out the door to go for a long run.
Talking tech: On Twitter, I keep a lot of lists. I have a list called news -- a straight-up media feed where I’m following breaking news across any category. I have a dedicated sports journalist list so I can keep up on what my colleagues are talking about. I have a digital strategy and tech list so I can keep track of things in the industry. I follow all of my friends, but I use Facebook more for that. I use Twitter a lot to search the way people are sharing and reading and referencing espnW. I do a lot of searching on there for new talent as well.
Must have music: I am all over the map. I’m a person who matches my music to my mood. I’ve got a running playlist that’s all pop music, Hot 100 kind of stuff that gets me up and moving in the morning. When I’m editing, I pretty much put BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB on repeat.
How I unwind: Running always shakes me out of whatever focus I’m in. If I’m looking to get some separation, I’ll go for a long run. Same thing with basketball -- doing something physical always seems to -- whatever residual stress I have -- it just kind of shakes out if I can go play a sport, separate myself from whatever the task of the moment is.
Food for thought: If I’m left to my own devices, I feel like pizza and pancakes are my main two food groups -- not exactly the healthiest way to go. But I feel like we go in bursts. There’s a Filipino dish called chicken adobo that I cook once a week, and my whole family loves it.
Day in the life: The thing that moves the needle most on our site are stories that fit in at the intersection of sports and society, as well as the stories that really take you inside the personality or the personal life of a popular athlete. In the past year, the sports-meets-society intersection has really been around domestic violence storylines within the NFL, the upcoming MAYWEATHER fight. We had a story that we ran recently that was truly a viral hit -- we had over 2 million reads in 48 hours. It was about CHRISTY MACK’s story. It was stunning to me that so many people would read a long-form piece about someone who was not a household name -- primarily on mobile.
