Washington Post veteran Leonard Shapiro to speak at Shenandoah University

Leonard Shapiro, former reporter, editor and columnist for The Washington Post, will speak at Shenandoah University’s Harry F. Byrd, Jr. School of Business at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26, in Halpin-Harrison Hall, Stimpson Auditorium on the campus of Shenandoah University (1460 University Drive, Winchester, VA 22601).

Shapiro will present “Len Shapiro, A Life in Sports Journalism.” A question and answer session will follow. The event is free and open to the public, and is part of the ongoing Distinguished Lecture Series sponsored by the school of business. Light refreshments will be provided during a pre-event reception at5:30 p.m.

“We are very fortunate to have a speaker with the life experience of Len Shapiro,” said Dean of the Harry F. Byrd, Jr. School of Business Miles Davis, Ph.D. “Our Sport Business Club, as well as the larger Northern Shenandoah Valley community, will greatly benefit from Mr. Shapiro’s perspective and insights into the world of sports.”

Shapiro was a reporter, editor and columnist for The Washington Post from 1969 until he retired from the newspaper in 2010. At the Post, he covered high school and college sports from 1969 to 1973, when he was assigned as the beat reporter focusing on the Washington Redskins.

In 1979, he was named assistant sports editor, mainly responsible for the day-to-day operation of the sports department. In 1983, he was named deputy sports editor, then sports editor from 1986 to 1991, before he returned to full-time reporting and writing.

Over the last 20 years of his career, he was the Post’s national NFL correspondent, covered professional golf and also wrote a weekly column focusing on sports media. He covered every Super Bowl from 1972 until 2012, all the major championships of golf from 1991 until his retirement, numerous World Series, NBA and NHL playoff games, major boxing matches, postseason bowl games and Final Fours, and four Olympics, including the 1980 winter games at Lake Placid, New York known for the performance of the gold-medal-winning “Miracle on Ice” U.S. hockey team.

Shapiro’s byline has appeared in numerous national and international publications, including The Sporting News, Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, Golf World magazine, Pro Football Weekly, Reader’s Digest, TV Guide, Washingtonian magazine, Washington Life magazine and the International Herald Tribune. Since retiring from the Post, he has done freelance work for the Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Washington Post magazine, Links magazine, Virginia Golfer magazine, CBSsports.com andglobalgolfpost.com. He is also a regular contributor to Middleburg Life, a popular monthly newspaper in the Virginia hunt country.

Shapiro is the author of seven books, including biographies of NFL Hall of Famer Sam Huff (“Tough Stuff”), former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson (“Big Man on Campus”) and an expose on illegal recruiting in college sports (“Athletes For Sale”). He’s contributed to several other books and appeared on ESPN, ESPN Classic, CNN, Comcast Sports Net, the NFL Network, NFL Films, as well as D.C. metro-area TV stations and numerous local and national radio shows.

A native of Syosset, New York, on Long Island, Shapiro graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1969. He is married to journalist and author Vicky Moon and has three children and seven grandchildren. He and his wife live in Middleburg, Virginia, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In 2001, Shapiro received the Dick McCann Memorial Award from the Professional Football Writers of America; the award is sometimes referred to as the sometimes referred to as the “writer’s wing” of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Shapiro served as a Hall of Fame selector from 1983 to 2012.

He was inducted into the Washington Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. He served as president of Golf Writers Association of America from 2005 to 2006 and is a current board member for the organization. Shapiro is also a former board member of the Pro Football Writers of America. He has been given writing awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Golf Writers Association of America and the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. and Virginia press associations. Shapiro was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and 1996.

Shapiro has served as a guest lecturer at Georgetown University, American University, George Washington University, George Mason University, Virginia Tech, the University of Maryland and at many local high schools. He also taught an advanced, semester-long course in sports journalism at the University of Wisconsin in 2011, 2013 and 2016.