Gwen Knapp, award-winning reporter, groundbreaking columnist, editor, and mentor, has died at 61

Mary Gwen Knapp, 61, of New York, award-winning former sports reporter and editor for The Inquirer, pioneering columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle, and editor, writer, and mentor for the New York Times and other publications, died Friday, Jan. 20, of lymphoma at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Known as Gwen to her readers, family, and friends, Ms. Knapp combined a relentless effort to produce accurate and impactful journalism with an engaging personality and sharp mind to win awards, inform and entertain countless readers, advance the role of women in journalism, and generally make the time she shared with everyone a memorable experience.

Her writing, in addition to the inherent drama of sports competition, often addressed sexism, racism, homophobia, doping, injustice, and other important issues that others before her had overlooked or ignored. Over four decades, she won national awards from the Associated Press sports editors as a reporter in 1994 and a columnist in 1998, and was known by colleagues for her energy and endless curiosity.

“Her beat,” longtime colleague and friend Michael Bamberger said in a tribute, “was the human condition.” Joan Ryan, former columnist at the Examiner and Chronicle, said on Twitter: “She had a mind so fertile and quick that she’d rethink her ideas and arguments as we were still processing her first torrent of thoughts.”

Ms. Knapp’s story portfolio is extensive and eclectic. She covered high school, college, professional, amateur, and Olympic sports, and practically everything else that had anything to do with athletics. “Gwen seemed to find a new Page One-worthy piece every week,” said longtime Inquirer staff writer Mike Jensen.

She was at her best, perhaps, when she told stories about people away from the bright lights and adoring fans. She opened a 1989 Inquirer story about a student at Philadelphia’s Northeast High School with: “Jamal S. Widgins wasn’t worried about his future in football when he walked into an immigration office for the umpteenth time, looking for a way out of Liberia.”

Nancy Cooney, her editor at The Inquirer, said Ms. Knapp had “a precise and lyrical style and a gift for storytelling. She cared so much about everything she wrote, and all the people she wrote about.”

» READ MORE: Ms. Knapp won an award in 1994 with this story: ‘Let’s play two’: Phillies flirt with daybreak

In San Francisco, she became one of the country’s leading female columnists in the 1990s and 2000s, calling out big-name athletes for using performance-enhancing drugs, digging deep into the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative drug scandal, and championing human and gay rights. A lifelong swimmer, Ms. Knapp said she viewed sports — and life — as an attempt to achieve without making capricious success the ultimate goal.

“The striving is what drew me to sports,” she said in her final column for the Chronicle in 2012. “I was a very marginal competitive swimmer but saw my limitations as challenges full of lessons.”

As an editor, Ms. Knapp collaborated with young writers just out of college and veterans proven to be among the best in the world. Using wit and logic, she was, colleague Ray Ratto said in a tribute, “thorough enough to be professional but light enough to keep her writers from lamenting her intrusions.”

Ms. Knapp broke into professional journalism as a copy editor at the Wilmington News Journal after graduating from Harvard University in 1983. She joined The Inquirer in 1985, went to San Francisco as a columnist for the Examiner in 1995, moved over to the Chronicle when the staffs combined in 2000, and was senior columnist for the Sports on Earth website from 2012 to 2014.

She became a senior editor at the New York Times in 2014 and worked at first on the foreign and national desks. She later oversaw the night sports desk, and, according to the Times, “was a mentor to young staff members, especially female ones.”

Writing, due largely to her innate intensity and quest for perfection, was challenging for Ms. Knapp, and she was known to gnaw on her pens and scrape her fingers through her strawberry blond hair as she constructed her stories. On her Twitter profile, she called herself a “recovering sportswriter.”

Born Nov. 18, 1961, in Wilmington, Mary Gwen Knapp graduated as valedictorian of Mount Pleasant High School in Wilmington in 1979 and earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Harvard. She shared one bathroom at home with younger sisters Susan, Rebecca, and Nancy, and her sisters said they got plenty of good advice and check-in calls over the years.

She wrote and edited stories for her high school and college newspapers, and delighted children as a lifeguard and encouraging coach at the local swim club. Her father, Laurence, taught her humility and persistence. Her mother, Eleanor, also showed her what it meant to be a rabid Phillies fan.

Ms. Knapp had what friends called a goofy wonderfulness and “made friends with the friends and family of her friends, and their friends and family, and kept them until the end,” said Amy Rosenberg, a longtime staff writer at The Inquirer. Before last Sunday’s game, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr remembered Ms. Knapp as a “wonderful person” and a “beloved figure in the Bay and in our sports community.”

She volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, and at a nonprofit in San Francisco for those experiencing homelessness. She often wore a headband to keep her hair in check, liked cats, was an avid reader, and had an echoing laugh that made those around her laugh, too.

She doted on her nieces and nephews, giving them “anything they wanted,” said her sister Nancy. “She was generous, loyal, and tenacious,” said her sister Susan. Her sister Rebecca said: “She made everyone feel like they were her best friend. And they were.”

In addition to her sisters, father, nieces, and nephews, Ms. Knapp is survived by other relatives.

A celebration of her life is to be held later.

Donations in her name may be made to A Home Away From Homelessness, c/o Bay Area Community Resources, 171 Carlos Dr., San Rafael, Calif. 94903.