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Anita Marks makes her mark
 She
grew up in South Florida and has remained there ever
since....that is until now. Anita
Marks, the one time Playboy centerfold and
quarterback for a female professional football team,
has also been the voice of sports radio for a number
of years in and around the Miami area.
Marks this month moves
up I-95 where she debuts on Baltimore's
WJFK (1300 AM).
Kevin Van Valkenburg
of the Baltimore Sun writes:
"To be truly good at
sports talk radio, you pretty much have to be. You
have to share a little piece of yourself every day
with your listeners, and delicately balance
confidence with curiosity and vulnerability. At
least that's the case when you're the new woman in
town, which Marks is, and you're trying to be taken
seriously in a town that's dead serious about its
sports.
"On sports talk radio, credibility with the
listening audience matters. It's like oxygen. If you
don't have it, you won't be around very long. And
the way Marks sees it, the quickest path to on-air
credibility isn't overconfidence, nor is it a
catchy, playground nickname like Mad Dog, Nasty or
The Brick. It's honesty. So - unlike some radio
hosts who boast an encyclopedic knowledge of local
sports history and occasionally wield that knowledge
like a blunt object - Marks has been upfront during
her first month on the air at WJFK (1300 AM). After
living most of her life in South Florida, she
doesn't know a lot about the Orioles, the Ravens or
the Terps, and so she's not going to pretend that
she does.
"But Marks does know sports, and if you dismiss her
outright simply because she's a woman trying to
succeed in a format dominated by men, you may be in
for a shock. What she does want to make clear is
that she is willing to listen, to learn and
hopefully, she says, help stimulate the sports
arguments that ripple across this city each day."
Anita Marks explained
to The Sun how her biggest challenge thus far
tackling the Baltimore sports fanatic crowd has been
"lack of history".
"In Florida, I grew up with it. I was at the
first-ever Heat draft when they drafted Rony Seikaly.
I went to dinner with Joe DiMaggio at Joe's Stone
Crab the night he threw out the first pitch for the
Florida Marlins. I was at the inaugural Florida
Panthers game.
"All the things like that here, I haven't been a
part of. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm
someone I'm not. So when people call in to talk
about something like the 20th anniversary of the
death of Len Bias, my attitude is, educate me. I
want to know what happened."
Sports911.com has been
on top of Anita Marks for the past few years....well,
let's just say we've been covering her longer than
just about anybody.
Back when I was editor
of now defunct CTN Magazine I had an
opportunity to watch Anita in action on the playing
field and sit down to speak about her future
in this interview
Think Anita Marks is
not a big name generating plenty of interest?
Think again. Sports911.com has recorded a
tremendous number of search inquiries into Ms. Marks
over the past two days.
----
Christopher Costigan,
www.sports911.com
Originally published June 27, 2006 12:21 am EDT
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