Christina Kahrl

Summary of Madison Activities

In Spring 2019, Lindsay Palmer (UW-Madison) moderated a discussion on discrimination in the newsroom and field. The discussion, entitled, “Gender at Work: Overcoming Bias in the Newsroom,” was attended by over 200 people and headlined by Michelle Ferrier (Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, TrollBusters.com), Christina Kahrl (ESPN) and Jon Sawyer (Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting).

Christina’s Biography

Christina Kahrl is the sports editor of the Chronicle. She joined the sports staff in 2021 after 10 years at ESPN.com, where she was initially a Major League Baseball writer and editor before becoming a senior editor for MLB coverage in 2016, managing ESPN’s Insider subscription digital content for MLB. In 2020, she moved into a role as a senior editor on ESPN’s multi-sports night desk, managing writers and editors in the reaction space. She was also an associate editor of ESPN’s Pro Football Encyclopedia.

Before joining ESPN, she was one of the cofounders of the baseball analytics think tank Baseball Prospectus in 1996, ultimately becoming the executive editor as well as a columnist, and the managing editor of its bestselling annual season guide. In her management role, she helped launch the careers of multiple baseball journalists as well as two MLB general managers.

She was also the acquisitions editor for Brassey’s Sports, focusing on sports analytics and history in baseball, pro football, basketball, motor sports, golf and tennis. She has also written for SportsIllustrated.com, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Salon.com, Slate, the New York Sun and the Washington Blade.

She returned to California having left to get a bachelor’s degree in modern European history at the University of Chicago and then a master’s degree in public history at Loyola University of Chicago.