Inspired by the always-excellent Libby Watson’s thread about the wonderful people who wrote for and edited Splinter, here are some people who made Deadspin wonderful. They are all weird and hilarious geniuses who are a joy to work with every day. As should be extremely obvious, they also have unimaginable levels of integrity and courage. Any one of them can make any publication so much better. Each name links to the person’s Deadspin archive.

Maitreyi Anantharaman, weekend contributor (email | Twitter): I knew Deadspin needed to bring on Maitreyi when I started seeing her smart, funny sports stories in Slate while she was still a college student. She didn’t have much news blogging experience, but it was obvious from the start that she was a natural. While almost all young writers struggle initially to develop their voice, Matreiyi seems to be born with hers, which makes her writing uniquely fun to read.

Albert Burneko, staff writer (email | Twitter): Whether it’s funny or angry or something else, Albert’s writing makes readers feel things. He can write authoritatively on any topic, and when he feels passionately about something (which is often), his sentences are electrifying. He’s scarily smart about the NBA, but is just as good on food and politics and general malfeasance. He also is great at editing because he is great at honing ideas and angles and workshopping ledes and jokes and kickers.

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Dom Cosentino, staff writer (email | Twitter): Dom’s work on the lasting impacts of NFL concussions — on players, their families, the league, and the legal system—has been absolutely vital. He is deeply sourced in the NFL and is constantly chasing a dozen brilliant story ideas. Reading him has made me a thousand times smarter about every part of football; talking about stories and structure with him has made me a thousand times better at journalism.

Gabe Fernandez, weekend contributor (email | Twitter): Gabe is a machine. He can switch from big story to unrelated big story so easily, and file them both so cleanly they can be published sans editing. Adding him to our stable of writers covering NFL Sundays meant a huge uptick in the number of fun and weird blogs on moments no one else had noticed. He was so good when he started, and still he’s gotten so much better so quickly.

Billy Haisley, news editor (email | Twitter): While he’s best known as a soccer expert, promoting Billy to news editor improved Deadspin’s speed and approach to every type of news coverage instantly. He’s constantly pushing people to find sharper angles, better jokes, the true heart of the matter. And somehow he’s also one of the best cultural critics anywhere.

Samer Kalaf, managing editor (email | Twitter): Samer sets high standards and inspires everyone around him to meet them. Whether as a writer or an editor, he was the driving force behind a huge number of classic Deadspin blogs. He has phenomenal instincts for how to tackle a story, who to call, and how to structure it. And he may well be the best headline writer on the team, which is an extremely high bar.

Tom Ley, features editor (email | Twitter): Tom moved from managing editor to features editor earlier this year because he wanted to push himself to take on the site’s biggest stories. He excelled beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, churning out a constant stream of pieces with lyrical storytelling and deep reporting. He’s a tough but endlessly patient editor who makes his writers better, and he’s also a fantastic reporter himself and has the perfect nose for what an audience is dying to read.

Drew Magary, columnist (email | Twitter): Obviously he’s the funniest writer on the internet, and a dream of a podcast host, and on and on. He’s the only person who can make the same column conceit feel fresh for a full decade, and he is a dream to edit. He’s also one of the most generous and supportive colleagues I’ve ever worked with at any company.

Dan McQuade, staff editor (email | Twitter): What’s great about Dan is that he’s a video expert who thinks like a writer and editor, so he is equally wonderful to work with in either medium. He is expert at everything from pulling clips quickly to stitching various pieces together to make something new and wonderful to writing about weird historical moments and weird contemporary ones. A true team player, he’s always eager to help whoever needs it.

Dave McKenna, staff writer (email): The man, the myth, the legend. He is, without question, one of the best sportswriters of all time. The tiniest shred of a tip or the merest mention of something strange in a story can send Dave down a rabbit hole from which he will emerge with several thousand perfect words. His humanity shines through his work so brightly, yet his stories are never self-indulgent. And it turns out he’s wonderful on camera, too.

Kelsey McKinney, staff writer (email | Twitter): Watching Kelsey get excited about a feature is so much fun. When she finds the perfect character or figures out the perfect structure, she is so gleeful! And man oh man does she have a knack for finding the perfect character and figuring out the perfect structure. She can write features on anything from football to religion to pop music and much more, and her story ideas are always unique and timely and so smart.

Diana Moskovitz, senior editor (email | Twitter): When Diana starts investigating something that smells fishy, anyone involved should be terrified. She exposed corruption or malfeasance time and time again, and always had the smartest takes on how to think about wrongdoing in the sports world. She is also a generous mentor and editor, always trying to help her writers improve or learn something new, and coaching them into incredible stories too.

Giri Nathan, staff writer (email | Twitter): Sometime in 2018, Giri decided he’d like to do more features, so he started pitching ideas. He hadn’t written a ton of features at that point, but his NBA and tennis blogs were always sharp, hilarious, and beautifully weird. Turns out his features are too, from profiles of the most interesting tennis players on tour to dives into bizarre subcultures. He genuinely enjoys the editing process, too—he takes real pleasure in improving his work.

Luis Paez-Pumar, staff writer (email | Twitter): When we had an opening for a staff writer, I said aloud that we had too many NBA nerds and were already plenty strong on soccer, so we shouldn’t focus on candidates who were most interested in those sports. And yet. Luis’s memo and interview were so good we couldn’t not hire him. He’s obsessively up-to-date on soccer news but can make it interesting to the rest of us—a difficult skill!—but he’s just as good on music and anything else.

Barry Petchesky, deputy editor (email | Twitter): No one did more to make Deadspin successful across multiple internet eras than Barry. There’s a joke-but-not-really around the GMG offices that he’s the best blogger in history, which is true, but his editing and leadership skills are just as good. Any time a problem arose, Barry had a brilliant idea for how to fix it, and everyone knew they could always trust his decisions. He is, by any measure, among the best journalists I’ve ever worked with.

Patrick Redford, staff writer (email | Twitter): Patrick is that rare combination of a fast and sharp news writer, a tenacious reporter, and a gifted features writer. I’ve never seen such a young writer so skilled at juggling multiple projects and somehow filing them all before deadline. My critical feedback to him at the end of 2018 was literally that he didn’t have to volunteer for every story.

David Roth, editor-at-large (email | Twitter): Saying you don’t want David’s Trump columns on your website is insane because they’re great, but also because you’re giving up a guarantee of hundreds of thousands of page views for each one. Writers love working for him because he’s endlessly supportive and excellent at bringing out their voices rather than imposing his own. And his warm presence and dry wit elevated both our podcast and our videos to new heights.

Lauren Theisen, staff writer (email | Twitter): Lauren’s focus on constantly improving as a writer and reporter is awe-inspiring—especially because she’s so good already. She kept two night shifts long past the time she had paid her dues because she knew it was making her better, and she approaches every story, from a game recap to a reported feature, with this enviable curiosity and drive. She is an expert on literally every sport somehow, and she thinks so deeply about how to improve coverage.

Chris Thompson, staff writer (email | Twitter): Promoting Chris from weekend contributor to staff writer was the easiest decision of my tenure at Deadspin. Any time I saw a news alert pop up on my phone during off hours, he was already on top of it—not with a basic aggregation, but with an angle that was so funny and sharp his blog stood alone. Reading his work, especially during the NBA and MLB seasons, is a joy, but he’s versatile enough to write on any topic. He loved making Deadspin better, and I loved learning from him.

Laura Wagner, staff writer (email | Twitter): Everyone knows Laura’s reporting skills, which exposed employee mistreatment at seemingly every sports media company out there (including her own). Her story process is so thorough and meticulous that she can take the most half-baked of assignments and turn it into a conversation-driving piece. She never settles for her work being anything less than outstanding, and she challenges her colleagues to be better in the best way.