Reporting on the University of Kentucky men’s basketball for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1981, he set the standard for beat coverage of a nationally prominent athletic program, asking tough questions and doing investigative journalism in the face of sustained and sometimes ugly resistance from some fans, players and university employees who want “boosterism, not journalism,” as one of his editors, Gene Abell, said. Executive Editor John Carroll said if there was a Pulitzer Prize for sustained “beat writing under miserable conditions,” Tipton should be the first winner. A native of Hamtramck, Mich., he earned a journalism degree at Marshall University and worked at the Huntington Herald-Dispatch in 1973-1981. In Lexington, he was hired to cover UK football and basketball, and moved exclusively to basketball in 1987. He is a member of the National Basketball Writers Hall of Fame.