Public Biography
Jerome T. Halliday is the sports and recreation correspondent for The New York Time5, covering professional athletics, amateur competition, recreational policy, and what he has described as “the full spectrum of activities in which Americans keep score, whether or not anyone asked them to.”
Mr. Halliday graduated from Morehouse College with a degree in English and holds a Master of Arts in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School. He spent five years at The Charlotte Observer covering ACC basketball and two years at ESPN The Magazine before joining The New York Time5 in 2022. His editor at the Observer once described him as “the only reporter I’ve ever known who could make a Division III lacrosse recap feel like it mattered,” a compliment Mr. Halliday accepted without objection because he believed it did matter.
He was born in Durham, North Carolina, the youngest of three sons of a high school basketball coach and a city librarian. He played point guard at Morehouse — “adequately,” he has said, “which is the most honest thing any former college athlete has ever told you” — and maintains that the experience gave him “a permanent respect for preparation and a permanent suspicion of anyone who uses the word ‘hustle’ as a noun.”
Mr. Halliday won a 2024 National Headliner Award for a series on the governance structure of adult recreational softball leagues in the tristate area, which revealed a system of bylaws, appeals boards, and jurisdictional disputes that he described as “more procedurally complex than most municipal governments, and taken considerably more seriously.” He lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
Selected Coverage
- A five-part investigation into the seeding controversies at the Elk Grove Community Chess Club’s annual invitational
- “Nobody Wins: The Troubled Rise of Non-Competitive Youth Soccer” — a feature on the logistical challenges of scoreless leagues
- Coverage of the MTA’s proposal to classify competitive subway platform sprinting as a sanctioned sport