Friday, April 25, 2025

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We have John Glionna (@johnglionna) here today. Spoke to him in December 2024, so, you know, we’re making good time here at CNF Pod HQ.

For the people who follow up with me from like a week ago, I’m like, ‘you might want to get a burrito and a Pepsi Zero Sugar.’ John’s a fun guy, one of those great journalists cut from a different fabric, a pre-internet vintage. He spent 26 years at the LA Times and he’s the author of No Friday Night Lights: Reservation Football on the Edge of America (Bison Books). Except there’s not really much football in the book.

This story takes place in a small, secluded town of McDermitt, Nevada, on the border of Oregon and Nevada. The high school rarely has enough kids to field a team of eight or so players. If they play, they lose and they lose big. It’s the story about a town trying to keeps its nose above water. It’s a town abandoned by the mining-industry boom times of the the late 20th century. John’s story is one of resilience and pride, of losing but not being a loser.

There’s now a weekly companion podstack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substack.com. If you want the transcripts and the text for the parting shot and deep dives into the archives, this is the newsletter to enrichen your podcast experience. It’s pretty cool, you should shotgun a few.

And while we’re hocking product, don’t forget to window shop at Patreon.com/cnfpod if you want to support the show financially. You can also follow for free and be a wallflower. The $4 and up tiers get some one-on-one time with me to talk some things through. Maybe it’s research and reporting, maybes it’s writing, maybe it’s marketing, maybe it’s that pesky voice in your head that tells you you’re not worth it and that your dream is stupid. I can speak to it because my dreams are dumb.

In this episode we talk about

What a Glionna Story is
How John didn’t punch down in his writing
Working with Glenn Stout on this book
What he loves most about this kind of work
And solving that thorny question of whether a story needs better writing or better reporting

You can follow the show on Instagram @creativenonfictionpodcast.

Being in such a digitally interfaced world where it’s quite possible to write a long article, even a book, without leaving our desks, there was something refreshing hearing John Glionna talk about his style of journalism. John says:

“I was always somewhere out there. That’s where I wanted to be.”

That’s where he would find his “Glionna Stories,” what his colleagues may or may not have been razzing him about, but he took as a compliment. He says:

“There was a certain saying in the newsroom of the LA Times and other newspapers I’ve worked for, and I always took it as a compliment. But somebody would say, ‘Well, that’s a Glionna Story.’ It’s like, ‘What’s a Glionna story?’ Well, you only find a Glionna Story if you’re looking down on the streets and peering away, what’s in that sewer grate there as you walk by. My wife says I write about people before they get famous and that’s where I like to go. It’s the real people, real stories.”

Real people, real stories. That’s at the center of his book No Friday Night Lights: Reservation Football on the Edge of America (Bison Books). There’s very little football, but there are plenty of real people in the fading town of McDermitt, Nevada.

After a day of reporting, with the sun still in the sky, John would transcribe his notes from the day and go out and walk on a road and pace into the setting sun for a few miles. Then he’d turn around and come back. He says:

“It was a lonely road that I like to be on.”

In essence, that was McDermitt, too, something of a lonely town that John saw much to relate to, this hapless football team, this dying town. The football team would never win. They rarely had enough players, and when they had enough players, they were overmatched. Merely having enough players to start a game was victory enough. John saw something relatable there. He says:

“As a writer, I mean, my life as a writer, it’s like, selling a lot of books. That’s sort of like winning for the Bulldogs. I’m a Bulldog. I write, I have games, and I love playing in the games. I write my books, and they go out to the world, and I find my select audience and I understand the idea of you’re not going to get it all. Just enjoy what you enjoy, the experiences that you do have at your at your disposal, and that is lining up and playing a game that Americans have played for a long time.”

It’s a great sentiment to approach the work, divorced of externalities: the agent, the big publisher, the book tour, all these status symbols associated with being a “successful writer.” The success, as John notes, is getting to play the game, staying on the field.

“I was on some kind of Facebook string or some social media string, and it was a writer’s group, and somebody said, ‘What’s your favorite moment as a writer?’ And all these people were like, ‘Oh, it’s a day of publication, the day when I get my Pultizer …’ And my answer was, ‘I love it when I’m on my first cup of coffee in the morning and I’m looking at the screen and I’m rereading the last 150 words that I wrote the day before and saying, Oh yeah, that’s good, but man, this is better.’ And building as a writer, looking back and rereading and editing your first draft and rebuilding and knowing what to cut and adding stuff. It’s, to me, it’s just wonderful. It’s a laboratory, and I don’t need anybody else. I’m oftentimes happy with the product. I’m a clown that makes balloons that kids don’t like, but I like to make those balloons because, I can do it pretty well. And to me, they look like real animals.”

John talks about his time working Glenn Stout, so pair this episode with any number of Glenn’s appearances on the show, like this one about change being the only constant.

John’s Recs

Travel and reading

Parting Shot: On the Need to Keep Social Media Profiles

I believe it was the parting shot for Ep. 460, honestly I lose touch, lose track of what I say on this podcast, in these parting shots. But it was something to do with potentially deleting Meta properties, which might still be on the table, but this is an argument for keeping them. Let me explain with an anecdote.

Several years ago, I was at Saratoga Race Course and a friend, along with his religious parents, visited. Gambling being a big no-no to Texas-raised Southern Baptists. My pal’s mother wouldn’t gamble, BUT she gave me money to bet for her. For in her head, this absolved her of the act, outsourcing the “sin” to the unredeemable, ya boi.

I say this because social media is something I disdain, but have accepted the necessary evilness of it all, though I harbor fantasies of the mass deletions of our accounts and watch as the tech oligarchs’ empires crumble at the collective click of a mouse. There’s something to be said that self-promoting our articles or books isn’t worth the tradeoff that puts every more millions and billions into the pockets and net worth of these terrible men.

I often ask YOU to share the show or otherwise promote my stuff. I can say that the work I do is putting the shit out there and then saddle YOU with sharing it. If we’re being honest, how often do you REALLY share something? I know I rarely do. I try and do my part, but I often consume cool things and end it there.

It would be unfair of me to ask you to get your hands dirty so I don’t have to, social media once removed. That makes me no different than my friend’s mother.

My wife/partner/whatever and I were lamenting how much we habitually reach for our phones, even if it’s just for games, but there’s always the seduction of compulsive email checking and scrolling. I said to her, in a moment of frustrating and angst, this thing in our hands? It’s just a toolbox. It’s there to serve our needs depending on the tool. All too often, if we allow it, the toolbox becomes the master and we become its toolbox for attention, for data, for numbing.

In a nutshell, that’s my argument for keeping things. I know I find out about events through IG that I otherwise wouldn’t know about. I still spend most of my time feeding my website with my anti-social media feed and blog posts. Living with my podcast transcripts and making good permission assets that are nourishing and inspiring, one hopes.

And, sure, many of us hate the idea of promoting, of self-promoting. But if we step out of our own heads for just a second, we didn’t do any of this shit alone: There are editors, designers, agents, publicists, marketing people, book packagers, book sellers, researchers, spouses, and friends who are very much invested in the journey … not just you. You think NFL quarterbacks like getting up to face the media every game? They are obligated to as the highest paid player, by and large, on the team, someone who represents the entire team.

In a way, as the author, yeah, your name is on the cover, but you are the proxy for the entire line of production. To fail to do your part of the promotion sells everyone short. Also, regarding social media, it may feel like you’re spamming the world, but based on the nefarious algorithms, few people are seeing your shit anyway. All of this is to say that failing to promote your own work out of some self-righteous virtue may appeal to some hipster ethic, but it’s also selfish and undermines the team of people who helped realize the dream.

It’s a good reminder that we don’t have to delete all our shit to rage against the algorithm. There are degrees of raging from complete abstention to pure intentionality.

Also, it’s a bit of a dick move to let others do your dirty work. I got enough strikes against me, I don’t need that one, too.

Many Moons Ago

John’s Recs

Parting Shot: On the Need to Keep Social Media Profiles

Many Moons Ago

400 Episodes Ago

300 Episodes Ago

200 Episodes Ago

100 Episodes Ago