Zachary Curtis Lowe (born August 24, 1977
) is an American sportswriter, journalist, and podcaster. After starting his journalistic career covering the criminal justice system in his home state of Connecticut, Lowe transitioned to basketball reporting and is today considered one of the premier columnists covering the NBA.

Education

Lowe is an alumnus of

Greenwich High School Greenwich High School is a four-year public high school in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States. The school is part of the Greenwich Public Schools system and serves roughly 2,700 students. It offers over 295 courses and a wide variety of co-cu ...

in Connecticut, and is a 1999 graduate of

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

. He spent two years teaching at

Cresskill High School Cresskill High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grades from Cresskill in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, operating as the lone secondary school of the Cresskill Publ ...

in New Jersey before pursuing a MA in U.S. History (with a thesis on the post-Civil War Reconstruction) at William & Mary and a MS in Journalism from

Columbia School of Journalism The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism sc ...

Career

For nearly four years, beginning in August 2004, Lowe worked as a crime, government, and courts reporter for his local

Stamford Advocate ''The Advocate'' is a seven-day daily newspaper based in Stamford, Connecticut. The paper is owned and operated by Hearst Communications, a multinational corporate media conglomerate with $4 billion in revenues. ''The Advocate'' circulates in S ...

; then spent two years with

The American Lawyer ''The American Lawyer'' is a monthly legal magazine and website published by ALM Media. The periodical and its parent company, ALM (then American Lawyer Media), were founded in 1979 by Steven Brill.Rob Neyer Rob Neyer (born June 22, 1966) is an American baseball writer known for his use of statistical analysis or sabermetrics. He started his career working for Bill James and STATS and then joined ESPN.com as a columnist and blogger from 1996 to 2011 ...

and

John Hollinger John Hollinger (born May 17, 1971) is the former Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and current Senior NBA columnist at The Athletic. Prior to December 2012, he was an a ...

, but he attributes his journalism skills to his beat-writer days. In 2010, he started running the "Point Forward" NBA column-blog on ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...

.'' In 2012, Lowe was hired by

Bill Simmons William John Simmons III (born September 25, 1969) is an American sports analyst, author, podcaster, and former sports writer who is the founder and CEO of the sports and pop culture website '' The Ringer''. Simmons first gained attention with ...

to join

Grantland ''Grantland'' was a sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN. The blog was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons, who remained as editor-in-chief until May 2015. ''Grantland'' was named after famed ...

as an NBA analyst. In 2015, after the closing of Grantland, his contract was picked up by Grantland's parent company,

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

. In 2016, Lowe was pursued by

Bleacher Report Bleacher Report (often abbreviated as B/R) is a website that focuses on sport and sports culture. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, with offices in New York City and London. Bleacher Report was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System in Aug ...

but ultimately re-signed with ESPN on a multi-year contract. Lowe hosts a weekly podcast called "The Lowe Post", which features mainly casual chats with other journalists, players, or coaches/GMs about the NBA. He also writes a weekly NBA article during the season for ESPN headlined as "Ten Things I Like And Don't Like, Including...". Lowe moderated the 2016 Basketball Analytics panel of the MIT-Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Writing style

Lowe is known for his detailed posts on basketball, use of video clips, and clear writing style. He writes about the entire NBA, unlike many sportswriters who are concerned about a single team. Lowe has cited his early-career work as a court reporter for his evidence-bias and balanced approach. In 2013,

Will Leitch William F. Leitch (born October 10, 1975 in Mattoon, Illinois) is an American writer and the founding editor of the Gawker Media former sports blog '' Deadspin''. Leitch is a national correspondent for MLB.com, a contributing editor at ''New Yor ...

called Lowe "one of the best basketball writers working right now" and "certainly the most interesting."

Josh Levin Joshua Benjamin Levin (born March 15, 1980) is an American writer and the national editor at ''Slate'' magazine. Levin also hosts the magazine's sports podcast, '' Hang Up and Listen.'' Biography Early life Levin was born and raised in New O ...

, writing in

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

, called Lowe "America's best sports writer."

Personal

Lowe is married to Croatian international media consultant Vesna Jaksic, whom he met when both worked for the Stamford Advocate. They have a daughter and reside in Connecticut.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowe, Zach American sportswriters Dartmouth College alumni College of William & Mary alumni Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni Living people 1977 births American podcasters Greenwich High School alumni