Mary Pilon

“I was a fly on the wall at Gawker Media during the heyday of this thing called blogging.”

“Money can be a reflection of our perceptions of power, self-esteem, personal history, fears, and happiness.”

“The more I think about the Olympics, even from afar, its mere concept stuns me. I can't think of any other line of work where, every four years, people gather to be ranked one, two, and three, then are more or less told to evaporate until the next go-around.”

“One of sports journalism's great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.”

“Increasingly, football fans are arguing that the game is bloated with too much down time. The officiating is clumsy.”

“I think that my main business is as a news person.”

“Historically, companies haven't hesitated to end their relationships with professional athletes amid scandals.”

“Women in finance bore the brunt of layoffs more than their male counterparts during the Great Recession in 2008 and were also more likely to have been in back office jobs that were replaced by computers.”

“Trucking is the backbone of U.S. commerce. Consumers rely on the industry to move the parts for their cars, the food for their dinner tables, and, increasingly, the goods they order online.”

“While the U.S. government is unlikely to ever limit the number of football games, plenty of parents are refusing to let their children play the sport due to the risk of head injuries.”

“So who or what is to blame for baseball games that go on forever? Two oft-cited culprits are constant replay calls and batters who leave the box in between every pitch to adjust their gloves and helmet and shin guards and elbow pads and then knock the dirt off their cleats before working up their stride for the next at-bat.”

“The first few days without a cellphone were difficult. I felt liberated from the static of Facebook and Twitter but feared that I had missed some email or call that someone had died.”

“The conditions for harassment are built into the very structure of the trucking business, beginning with the training process.”

“I'm astonished at how quickly the Great Recession came and went.”

“In reporting, you will often be humbled by the courage others have in telling and trusting you with their tale, no two alike.”

“To play 'Tetris' is to knowingly opt in to something that has no end and no way of winning.”

“The fall of Rome seemed unthinkable to people at the time but inevitable to historians reflecting upon it with the benefit of context.”

“If bingeing on bad emergency-room-themed television has taught me anything, it's that crisis situations bring out the best and worst in people.”

“For generations, minor-league baseball has been seen as the scrappier, sometimes seedier, counterpart to its big-league sibling. Games are often cloaked in strange and sometimes awkward theme nights. Some of the mascots are ragged or downright bizarre. The ballparks are smaller and filled with fewer fans.”