Matt Calkins resigned from the Seattle Times on Thursday after saying the paper refused to publish a column he wrote about the Save Women's Sports movement. He said the decision left him unable to do the job he had spent 11 years doing.
The move matters because Calkins was not speaking in the abstract. He said the column centered on two Washington student-athletes who oppose allowing transgender girls to compete in female sports, and he argued that those voices are often pushed aside. He said he wanted to get their voices out there, not simply repeat the usual arguments that surround the issue.
Calkins said he submitted the piece a couple Fridays ago and waited six days before editors told him it would not run. In his telling, the paper’s reason was that he had not warned them in advance that he was working on it. He said he respected his editors, but added that he did not buy that explanation and felt the decision was enough to keep him from doing his job as a columnist.
The column also came out of a controversy that had already been building around a July 28 game between the Seattle Storm and the Indiana Fever at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Calkins said he had attended a rally supporting Sophie Cunningham, who has spoken against transgender women participating in women's sports, and that the dispute over the game helped shape the piece he tried to write.
His resignation turns a rejected column into a public newsroom dispute, but the sharper question now is whether the Seattle Times will explain why it stopped the piece after six days of review. Calkins said he had a lot of respect for his editors and did not harbor personal animosity toward them, yet he also said he could not do his job if his voice was being stifled. That leaves the paper with more than a personnel change to account for. It has to decide whether to say, plainly, where it drew the line.
