Tom Friend

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT TOM FRIEND

Tom Friend is a two-time Emmy nominated writer, author, director, producer, columnist, reporter and commentator who worked 20 years at ESPN, as well as at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Kansas City Star, the San Jose Mercury News and the National Sports Daily. He co-produced the recent Showtime documentary,\"Stand,\'\' on the life of activist and former NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, whose anthem protest in 1996 sparked a national controversy - personally conducting the main 10-hour interview with Abdul-Rauf for the project. His book,\"The Chicken Runs At Midnight,\'\' was a 2018 finalist for the CASEY award, given to the best baseball book of the year, and his TV version of \"The Chicken Runs at Midnight\'\'- which he reported and wrote for ESPN - was nominated for a 2016 Sports Emmy. He wrote and co-produced the Emmy-nominated “Quiet Storm,\'\' the 2019 Showtime film on the life of basketball player Ron Artest which won best documentary at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Four years prior, he co-directed ESPN Film’s “Going Big,” a documentary on the player drafted ahead of Michael Jordan, Sam Bowie, which won a National Headliner Award. He has had multiple stories reprinted in the anthology,\"Best American Sports Writing,\'\' and has had his work cited by Harvard University\'s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. A native of Washington DC and a graduate of the prestigious University of Missouri journalism school, he is currently the NBA writer and a long-form feature writer at Sports Business Journal.