Yanyan Li
Yanyan Li covers sports for the Enquirer with a through-line of connecting games and athletes to larger stories about inclusion, opportunity and the evolving landscape of women’s and Olympic sports. Her work mixes fast-turn event coverage with deeper reporting on milestones, legal changes and social-justice initiatives that shape how fans and players experience sport. She moves comfortably between local Cincinnati teams and global competitions, often centering athletes and moments that signal broader change rather than only the final score.
Cincinnati Open and pro tennis coverage
Li is one of the Enquirer’s primary reporters on the Cincinnati Open, delivering round-by-round coverage of both ATP and WTA fields. She co-authors detailed match result wraps from the early rounds through the quarterfinals, tracking upsets, seed exits and momentum shifts for top players.
Her tennis coverage is not limited to scores; she highlights historically significant outcomes, such as profiling Arthur Fils’ win as the tournament’s first Black men’s singles champion. She also reports on operational and fan-facing issues at the event, including weather-related cancellations of qualifying sessions and how they affect the schedule and spectators. On social platforms, she extends this beat by interviewing players like Taylor Fritz about the physical and psychological aspects of navigating an up-and-down season, then framing those conversations in accessible language for fans.
Local teams, events and high school sports
Li’s Enquirer work also spans local teams and grassroots football, where she often looks at how community, history and social justice meet on the field. In one notable piece, she covers a seven-on-seven football event bringing together high school players and a Bengals legend, framing it as both a skills showcase and a social justice initiative that uses sport as a bridge between youth and established figures.
Her responsibilities include covering Bengals training camp and emerging formats such as OHSAA girls flag football, giving attention to new pathways for young athletes in the region. She reports on FC Cincinnati’s participation in cross-border competitions, such as a Leagues Cup match against Liga MX’s Pumas UNAM at TQL Stadium, with clear details on timing, context and what the matchup means for the club’s broader ambitions.
Across these assignments, she balances nuts-and-bolts information - dates, opponents, formats - with an eye for how local events fit into bigger trends in the sport.
College sports, eligibility and the business of athletics
Li devotes significant reporting to college athletics, particularly around eligibility rules and the business forces reshaping the games. At the Enquirer, she co-reports on NCAA policy questions, including coverage of debates over allowing a fifth year of eligibility for some players and the implications of legal challenges to the association’s current rules. Her experience covering the Borovicanin v.
NCAA lawsuit gives her a grounding in how litigation and regulation intersect with individual athletes’ careers, which informs her broader approach to college sports stories. In previous work for a national sports-business outlet, she wrote dozens of articles that moved beyond game recaps to explore topics like the changing economics of college sports and the impact of technologies such as artificial intelligence in athletic performance and operations.
That background means her college coverage tends to situate policy shifts, tournaments and team news within the wider ecosystem of media rights, governance and player empowerment rather than treating them as isolated events.
Women’s sports and swimming
Women’s sports and swimming are a consistent focus in Li’s portfolio, spanning professional leagues, collegiate competition and the Olympic movement. As a writer for a dedicated swimming outlet, she has produced hundreds of pieces on swimmers across the world, making her one of that publication’s most prolific contributors.
Her social feed shows close, ongoing attention to athletes like Katie Ledecky, Summer McIntosh and Hunter Armstrong, where she explains technical aspects of races and training while also spotlighting under-recognized achievements. In her previous sports-business role, she covered WNBA and women’s basketball, women’s hockey, softball, track and field and soccer, often tying individual stories to broader efforts to build visibility and commercial momentum for women’s sports.
She brings that same lens to her current reporting, ensuring that women’s competitions, whether at the Cincinnati Open or in college and pro leagues, receive context about their significance in the wider sports landscape.
Across these beats, Li’s work is distinguished by its range and coherence: she moves from local high school fields to international tennis courts and Olympic pools, but the through-line is a clear interest in how sports function as arenas for equity, recognition and structural change.
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.