‘I didn’t feel like I could speak my mind’: Seattle Times columnist quits after paper kills Sophie Cunningham story

After 11 years as a sports columnist at The Seattle Times, Matt Calkins said he resigned because the paper repeatedly shelved columns that didn’t align with its editorial perspective, with the final straw being a piece about two female student-athletes opposed to competing against biological males.

Calkins said the spiked column was written from the perspective of a girl who attended a Seattle Storm game to support Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham’s stance on keeping biological males out of women’s sports, and Frances Stot, a student-athlete from Tumwater who refused to play a game against a biological male and was forced to share a locker room.

“The whole point of my column was, if you read between the lines, you could see where my stance was, but I was basically just saying, ‘This is not an anti-trans movement if you agree with Sophie Cunningham,'” Calkins told “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “‘Let’s stop hurling those labels around. This is a delicate subject. Can we please have a conversation on it that’s polite and civil?'”

Calkins said the column sat with editors for six days before being killed. He submitted the piece on a Friday, was told it wouldn’t be ready for Sunday’s paper, then watched it get escalated through multiple layers of editors before being spiked the following Thursday.

“To me, it was just clear from the start that they were never going to run it, and they just kind of came up with an excuse,” Calkins said.

This was not the first time. Calkins said The Seattle Times previously killed a column questioning the U.S. women’s soccer team’s equal-pay claims and another featuring a Black basketball coach urging the public not to stereotype police officers in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“They are OK with exploring where sports and politics mix as long as it’s coming from a certain viewpoint,” Calkins said. “If it’s coming from what can be considered a conservative viewpoint or a central viewpoint, it’s clearly something that wasn’t toeing the left-wing line, and that’s where the problem starts.”

‘Pure panic set in’: Calkins describes the aftermath of walking away

Calkins said there was a brief moment of euphoria after resigning, followed by panic.

“There was like a 10-minute period of euphoria where I felt like I had a burden lift off my shoulder because this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while,” Calkins said. “And then pure panic set in. I’m like, ‘OK, I’m about to be unemployed. I don’t know what’s next.'”

The response, Calkins said, has been overwhelmingly positive from people on both sides of the political spectrum, which he described as the “best possible scenario.”

“I feel completely justified in what I did, whereas for the past week and a half I was really going back and forth: Did I make the right decision?” he said.

Jake says story is ‘dark mark’ against The Seattle Times

KIRO host Jake Skorheim said the story is a dark mark against The Seattle Times and predicted the paper would likely circle the wagons rather than address it.

“This is a tremendously dark mark against The Seattle Times,” Jake said. “If I were them, I’d be having some very serious discussions right now about what kind of paper they want to be going forward.”

Jake argued The Seattle Times is creating “this illusion that there is this consensus on that topic that I would say they are in the vast minority on.”

Spike, father of a trans son, says The Seattle Times has ‘no faith in its own readership’

KIRO host Spike O’Neill, who noted he is the father of a trans young man but shares Calkins’ view on fairness in women’s sports, said the story is bigger than the column itself.

“This story is not about the piece that he wrote at all,” Spike said. “This story is about The Seattle Times refusing to acknowledge that there are points of view that this city deserves to hear about and that are not being shared by their newspaper.”

Spike said The Seattle Times has no faith in its own readership.

“The Seattle Times seems to have such little faith in their own audience, their own customers, that they can’t have a conversation with an opposing point of view,” Spike said.

Jake closed by pointing to Calkins’ character.

“He’s shown that he has the courage of his convictions,” Jake said. “He didn’t know this was going to be the response. What he knew for a fact was he couldn’t continue working at a place that was trying to stifle his voice and shut him up.”

KIRO Newsradio has reached out to The Seattle Times for comment.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3