Tim Kawakami

Tim Kawakami is an American sports journalist for The San Francisco Standard. Previously, he was a sports columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. In addition to his print column, he maintained a blog, communicated on Twitter, and had a podcast series. He was named the California Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association in 2013. In 2017, he joined The Athletic, a subscription-based, sports journalism website, becoming the editor-in-chief for its San Francisco Bay Area edition.

Early life Kawakami was born in Oakland, California, and later moved to San Francisco and Burlingame. His grandfather owned The New World-Sun, a Japanese-language newspaper in San Francisco. Kawakami attended Northwestern University, where he got his start in sportswriting with The Daily Northwestern.

Kawakami started his "Talking Points" blog in 2006. He began a podcast series, “The TK Show”, in 2015,

Kawakami left The Mercury in July 2017 to become the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Bay Area edition of The Athletic. He joined The San Francisco Standard on September 13, 2024, together with fellow Athletic journalist David Lombardi. Kawakami said his departure stemmed from a desire to prioritize local sports coverage, a focus he felt was shifting at The Athletic in favor of a broader, national perspective.

SFGate wrote that Bay Area media circles generally considered him to be "credible, fair, and tenacious".