Liana Handler
Liana Handler covers the day-to-day drama of Dodgers baseball through tightly focused game stories that foreground momentum swings, role-player contributions and the emotional undercurrent inside the clubhouse. She writes as much about how a game feels in the late innings as about what the box score shows, often zeroing in on turning points, comeback arcs and the players whose performances shift a series or a homestand.
Dodgers game action and turning points
Handler’s core work follows the Dodgers through individual games, highlighting the specific sequences that decide results rather than offering broad-season think pieces. In her coverage of the win over the Rockies keyed by Kiké Hernández, she builds the story around his emotional comeback and the Dodgers’ seventh-inning surge, using that frame to explain how the game tipped and why that moment mattered within the series context. Across recent Dodgers pieces she returns to late-inning rallies, pitching changes, defensive plays and base-running decisions that flip the score, treating each as the backbone of her narratives rather than a line of detail at the bottom.
Her game stories stay close to the field, recapping scoring plays, starter and bullpen performances and key managerial moves with clear, chronological structure. She explains how specific at-bats unfold, how pitchers attack certain hitters and how the Dodgers adjust after falling behind or squandering chances, giving readers enough description to follow the game flow without drifting into ornate color writing.
The emphasis is on cause-and-effect inside the game: who executed, who faltered and how a single inning can reframe an entire night at the ballpark.
Role players, depth pieces and emotional arcs
A recurring thread in Handler’s coverage is attention to players who occupy the middle and lower tiers of the roster but end up driving results. Hernández’s comeback performance is one example of how she uses a single player’s night to tell a larger story about contribution, resilience and clubhouse energy. Similar pieces focus on bench bats elevated into starting roles, young call-ups pressed into high-leverage situations and depth pitchers asked to stabilize the staff during stretches of injury or fatigue.
She often frames these stories around the emotional beats that follow big moments: how a struggling hitter responds to a breakthrough game, how a reliever processes a tight escape, how the dugout reacts to a momentum-swinging play. Quotes and postgame reactions are used to show how players interpret their own performances and how teammates and coaches contextualize them within the long season. That approach gives her work a human through-line without drifting into personality features; the emotional angle always circles back to on-field consequence.
Series context and season-long implications
Handler situates individual games inside the rhythm of the Dodgers’ season, noting how a particular win or loss affects a series, a road trip or a divisional race.
Her stories mark how the club responds to previous nights - bouncing back from a bullpen collapse, building on a blowout win, or salvaging the final game of a set - to explain why a given result matters beyond the immediate scoreline. She points out when key performances come at the start of a homestand, before a tough stretch of schedule or against a direct rival, tying nightly action to broader stakes.
Within that frame, she tracks patterns in offense and pitching: stretches when the lineup leans on power versus manufacturing runs, or periods when the rotation is carrying the bullpen or vice versa. Rather than offering sweeping analytical essays, she threads these observations through her game coverage so that a reader following her work over time sees how the Dodgers’ strengths and weaknesses evolve. This makes her especially tuned to inflection points in the season, where an emotional win, a comeback by a trusted veteran or a dominant outing by a young arm signals a shift in form.
Straightforward reporting and clubhouse access
Handler writes in a straightforward, reportorial style built on direct observation from the ballpark and postgame access.
Her stories are grounded in what players and coaches say immediately after games, with quotes used to clarify strategy decisions, injury statuses and the state of the clubhouse. She avoids ornate language and keeps paragraphs tight, which keeps the focus on information, sequencing and the voices of the people involved.
That approach makes her coverage most valuable for understanding the Dodgers’ nightly realities: who is available, how the clubhouse is handling adversity or hot streaks, and which players are emerging as day-to-day factors. For communications professionals, her lane is clear: she is immersed in Dodgers game coverage, especially moments where individual performances, emotional swings and series context intersect.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
Adam Stern covers the business of motorsports and combat sports at Sports Business Journal, focusing on how sponsorships, media deals and new events reshape racing and fighting. His beat includes NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, rallycross, UFC and boxing. He tracks brands, broadcasters, manufacturers, promoters and streaming platforms, with reporting on sponsorship strategy, rights deals, original content, series growth, team projects and technical regulations. He examines how Cadillac’s Formula 1 entry supports broader marketing aims, how F1 Academy builds commercial momentum and whether new MMA promotions can challenge UFC. His work includes short speed reads on deals and longer features on multi-party investments. He reports on the money and strategy behind the action, treating motorsports and combat sports as connected marketplaces shaped by branding, dealmaking and media innovation.
Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.