How I got here

Early in August, I took a buyout from the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper. This left me with a month left on the clock and I took as much personal/vacation time as I could. My last day at the paper was Sept. 5.

I finished up a 4,000-word profile of Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason. I wrote a farewell column. In-between, I worked a shift where I was asked to produce an informational bit about How to Watch the Cleveland Browns-Carolina Panthers preseason game on Aug. 8. You’ve seen them. They’re everywhere — ESPN, SI, every single publication in the USA Today Network. Yahoo! And so on, ad infinitum, across the breadth of the worldwide web. If How to Watch pieces are properly optimized for search engines, they draw web traffic. 

It was the penultimate piece of newspaper journalism at the end of a 43-year career — 26 years at the Dispatch and 17 at the Hartford Courant. How to Watch an NFL preseason game. You can call it “click bait” or you can call it “things people are interested in.” You can be philosophical and call it “reality.” I’m not judging because judgement is best rendered on a bar rail and, alas, I am not at a bar rail, not right now. I’m just saying How to Watch, which can be critical to page views and advertising rates, is not my forte.

Among the many colorful sportswriters I’ve had the pleasure to know was Randy Smith (RIP), who was a columnist for the Manchester (Conn.) Journal-Inquirer. The JI was (and is, I believe) a plucky, afternoon daily that punched above its weight. Smith, who wielded sentences like a knife fighter, had a distinctive voice and a wide following.

"The Words Don't Count Anymore"

One of Smith’s bar-rail rants could be titled, “The Words Don’t Count Anymore.” He’d watch reporters work a locker room, reporters who’d jump in scrums and hold out mini recorders. Then, the reporters would go to the press room and spend an hour transcribing the recordings. And then they’d try to write something coherent as deadlines closed in like Patton’s 3rd Army.

“They’re spending all their time transcribing,” Smith would moan. “What do they have? Quotes? Bah. They should be writing, or the words don’t count anymore.”

Smith died just shy of his 62nd birthday in 2008. He died like an an old-timey sportswriter; I won’t get into the details, but if you knew Randy, you were not shocked. By moving on to the composing room in the sky when he did, he was spared a rewrite of one of his famous rants. If he thought “The Words Don’t Count Anymore” was true in the 1990s, when I knew him, he’d be launching himself into another orbit in the 2020s. Changes to the industry have come at warp speed. Newspapers are no longer the town square, and its editors are no longer the curators of the conversation. It’s a pixillated online world. The words don’t count anymore — or, at least, they’re just spot relief in the middle innings. It’s the traffic that matters. The spin rate. Randy Smith would’ve hated it. He would have sat on the photocopier and and used the picture of his ass to fill the How to Watch hole.

I had 26 terrific years at the Dispatch, a storied title and a wonderful place to work. While the staff contracted (along with the industry) during my time at the Big D, the place is still peopled by any number of fine journalists who get behind the mule and plow every day. They do much more than How to Watch. They are smart and nimble and plugged in. I will continue to subscribe, because it is my hometown newspaper, and because of the people. I just didn't fit in anymore.

Hanging out my own shingle

An old mentor of mine, Jeff Jacobs at the Courant, had a saying: “There are only two things for journalists – scoops and good shit. Everything else is just filler.” Break a story or write something people want to read. Those things are still important, but there’s now so much more to the financial equation. It makes me ill-suited for the modern game. That’s one reason I applied for a “Voluntary Severance Offer” and, presumably, one reason why my “VSO” was accepted by the Dispatch’s parent company, Gannett.

The other reason I took the buyout was to start over at age 61. I know I have more to offer and I’m hanging out my own shingle. The plan is to reach people where they are, people who know me and what I do, and humbly request they buy in. Hence, this blog – and all that will come next (stay tuned).

In September, 1999, I was hired to be the Dispatch’s first Blue Jackets beat writer. I became a general sports columnist coming out of the 2004-05 NHL lockout, when Aaron Portzline took the conn on the Jackets beat. With more latitude, I began to devote time to MLS and the Crew, among other things, while still keeping up with the Blue Jackets.

I will be focusing on — but not limiting myself to — writing and reporting on the Blue Jackets, maybe the most anonymous franchise in pro sports, and the Crew, a franchise they tried to steal away to Austin. The Disrespected.

My business plan includes expansion into podcasting and video production (again, stay tuned). I’m jumping off a cliff. The greater part of me is excited. Another part — the part that has been receiving a weekly check from a big-city newspaper for 43 years — spasms with trepidation. I hope our parachutes work.

I’m going to have fun with my friends. Wheeeee. Come on along.