Philadelphia Inquirer’s Keith Pompey is PSWA’s Stan Hochman Award recipient for journalism excellence
A truck had pulled up in front of Keith Pompey’s door one morning when he was a young and hungry reporter in Martinsville, Va. Inside of that truck was his mother and father William Pompey and Sandra Hill, getting set to pack up the belongings and return them – and him- to his Frankford neighborhood.
“I was not making a lot of money and they were really worried about me,” Pompey recalled. “And I remember that the way I got them to let me to stay was by promising them that one day, I would end up working at the Philadelphia Inquirer and covering the 76ers. And they finally agreed to let me stick around and keep working toward my dream job.”
For the last 11 years, Pompey has been able to live out that dream in the incredibly challenging landscape of the modern media industry. Highly respected for his work ethic and reporting chops by his peers, he is being honored with the 2023 Stan Hochman Award for outstanding sports coverage by the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association.
Pompey has worked on one of the most active team beats in all of professional sports, starting with the early days of “The Process” with Sam Hinkie and Brett Brown, the transition to Bryan Colangelo’s reign of error, the build into contention with Joel Embiid as the centerpiece and the endless dramas surrounding Ben Simmons and James Harden. And Pompey does it with a drive – making sure he’s at every practice and every road game that he can possibly get to in order to build the relationships needed to be get the best stories.
“You have to have a lot of passion with the beat,” Pompey said. “If you aren’t passionate on it, you aren’t getting up to look at injury reports when you first wake up in the morning or staying at the practice facility a little longer to get a little nugget for a story. That’s the main thing when you are working on a beat like this.”
Pompey grew up in Frankford and went to North Catholic High (RIP) before heading to the University of Pittsburgh. Before arriving to cover his hometown team, he traveled to Virginia to work at the Martinsville Bulletin and the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News for three years.
He arrived back at the Inquirer and began covering South Jersey sports. Shortly afterwards, he became in charge of the soccer and high school basketball beats at the Inky before being promoted to Temple football and basketball, where he worked for three seasons before taking over the 76ers beat.
The beat nature has changed in the past decade as teams and agents use national insiders to get their message out, but Pompey’s coverage has been steady and informative.
“It can make life difficult on the beat guys,” Pompey said. “But you know that if you are breaking news on your beat that you are really working hard.”