Remembering Furman Bisher, The Dean of Masters Journalists

WABE’s Rose Scott profiles the legend and legacy of the man called the dean of Masters Journalists.

There was a time way before the 24-hour sports network when fans solely relied on the local sports page for the latest news and commentary.

Furman Bisher was that man for Atlanta.

He came to town in 1950 to work for the Atlanta Constitution.

Bisher had already made a name for himself when he landed what many consider the holy grail of sports interviews. That was a 1949 discussion with Shoeless Joe Jackson. He was the major league baseball player banned from the game for his association with the infamous Black Sox Scandal.

Bisher says Jackson was, “willing to talk  and had never talked to a newspaper man before and it was good time to do it now and so I wrote it for sport magazine.”

Bisher recalled many moments of his career when he sat down with WABE in 2008.

He talked about the evolving state of sports media and said sports reporters seemed disconnected with today’s athletes, “we don’t have much of relationship with athletes in this day and time” he said.

“When I was coming along in earlier days the athletes made about the same money that we did”

That sentiment is shared by ESPN sports reporter, Jeremy Schaap, “the appreciation of the written word was paramount to guys in Furman’s generation and I think in the environment in which sports is covered today, that’s been lost to a certain degree.”

Furman Bisher wrote on college and professional football, baseball and basketball.

But it’s the Masters in Augusta that Bisher seemingly enjoyed to cover the most.

Current AJC sports columnist Jeff Schultz calls Furman’s an icon but particularly at Augusta, “there’s a media work room and he’s the only guy in that you see the guys in the green jackets walk in to seek him out to say hello to him.”

The man from Denton, North Carolina still used an old 1948 Royal typewriter well into his semi-retirement.

13 books and countless articles into a career spanning decades, Bisher chuckled at the idea of his legacy.

“I ain’t ready yet, I don’t know I really have no great concern about it, I just hope people who know me think that I’m pretty decent sort of human being and I’d like for them to think I’m pretty damn good writer and I work at it every day, I sit down to write my next column as if it’s going to be the best one I ever wrote”