Lisa Olson

Lisa Olson is an American sports journalist. Her work has been featured in the anthology, "The Best American Sports Writing". She was previously a sports columnist for the New York Daily News, and the first-ever female sports columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, where she covered rugby union, Australian rules football, cricket and rugby league. She also was a national columnist for AOL's FanHouse sports website, and a columnist and the first woman in Sporting News' 120-year history to write the magazine's monthly back page. Olson is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America and is a Hall of Fame voter. She has covered sports stories in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, China, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.

In 1990, while working at the Boston Herald, she was sexually harassed by New England Patriots football players in the team's locker room. Olson sued the team, and the players she implicated were fined by the NFL after its own investigation. The incident is considered by many to be a watershed moment for women in sports journalism.

Olson was born and raised in the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona. Her family consisted of fervent sports fans. She attended Apollo and Shadow Mountain high schools, and graduated from Northern Arizona University's journalism program in 1987. She was the sports editor of her high school and college newspapers.

After her graduation from college, she moved to the East Coast to attend graduate school, but she decided to pursue a career in sportswriting. One day, she went unannounced to see an editor of the Boston Herald and asked for a job. (She had tried to do the same thing at the Boston Globe, but could not get past security.) The Herald editor offered her a position handling horse-racing agate. She impressed her supervisors, and the paper hired her as a paid sports journalist. She was assigned to cover the Boston Bruins, the 1990 Super Bowl, and, beginning in the fall of 1990, the New England Patriots.

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