Good friends
Posted: March 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Media | 49 Comments »
This one’s personal. I want to tell you a bit about three friends — one named Jim, one named Mechelle, another named David — who have had a huge impact on my life the last ten years or so. I don’t have any agenda for telling the stories. There are no lessons at the end, and no grand statements. They are just all very much on my mind today.
Jim loves cars. He loves cars in that American way that that I find fascinating, perhaps because it is so American, perhaps because I don’t understand cars. He loves to think about how cars work, what gets them to go fast, what it is about certain human beings that makes then yearn for speed. I had a friend years ago whose father was an auto mechanic, and she used to tell me that after he got old and his eyes began to go, he would go out into the driveway, open the hood of his car, start the engine and just listen to it purr. She would watch him out there, watch the way he would move his head side to side, like he was listening to music. Almost every time I have seen Jim, I have thought about that story.
When I first knew Jim, he was not a writer. He was an assistant sports editor then, and his job was to assign stories and work with reporters. He had the necessary passions – he delighted in words and he was eager to make the paper excellent — but, as he told me many times, editing did not speak to his heart. He wanted to write, and more he wanted to write about the thing he understood best, the drivers who pushed the limits, the crews that built their cars, the feelings that the fastest cars inspired all over the world.
Well, if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need. Jim became an auto racing writer. And he became one of the best in the whole damned country. What makes Jim so good is that he can get to the heart of the thing. To him, racing — and it doesn’t matter what kind, could be Formula One or Indy Car or NASCAR or funny car or trucks or dirt track or two lawnmowers going side-by-side into turn three — goes beyond the strategy, beyond the noise, beyond the danger, beyond even the personalities (though he has always loved the personalities). The thing is, he can FEEL the thing from all angles, he can feel why the driver wants to go 200 mph, and why the crew chief spends days and nights making the tiniest adjustments to coax horsepower out of gears and belts, and why racin’ fans want to be around it all.
A couple of times every year, he would call me to pitch a story. I don’t know racing at all. Jim knows that. One of our ongoing jokes: I would come up to him and say, “Hey, I hear there’s something in racing called ‘The Chase’ or something like that. Shouldn’t you write something about that?” And he would always say, “What is it called again? You say it’s called a ‘Chase?’” Well, it seemed funnier on other days. But Jim would still call me, and he would say: “You need to do a story on this guy from Springfield, he might have been the greatest driver ever.” That was Larry Phillips, and it led to perhaps the best newspaper story I have ever written.
A piece of that story:
Turn 1 story: James Ince had just finished school when Larry Phillips pulled him aside and asked him to work on the crew. The two had raced each other a few times, and Larry liked James’ fight. James, meanwhile, knew exactly what kind of tyrant Larry Phillips was. “Once you get to know Larry, you realize he has a heart of gold,” James says. “The problem is, few people get to know Larry.”
James took the job. And the very first thing he had to do was clean out Larry’s shop.
“What do you want me to do with all the trophies?” James asked.
“Dump them,” Larry said.
So, Larry started unloading the trophies. And he unloaded. And he unloaded. By the time he was done, a tractor-trailer was two-thirds filled with trophies. There were hundreds of them. There were dirt-track trophies and asphalt trophies, huge championship trophies with eagles on them and little plaques shaped like race cars.
“What do you want me to do with them?” James asked again, just to be sure.
“Dump them,” Larry said, this time with a little edge to his voice. He didn’t like giving orders twice.
So, James dumped those trophies. Gave some to charity. Dumped the rest in a landfill.
“Larry didn’t care much for trophies,” James says now. “He wanted the checks.”
Once, Jim set it up for me to go North Carolina so I could spend time with the Last American Hero, Junior Johnson. I reprinted that story here. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories.
Once, he set me up to talk with Jimmie Johnson, who has won the last three NASCAR Cup points championships. And in some ways that was my favorite story last year.
On and on. I never have developed a great understanding or appreciation for racing itself — I don’t have anything against it, of course, but it’s just not something in my blood. And still, every time Jim would suggest a story, every time he would talk to me about racing, every time he would describe even the most tedious of details, he had the ability to transmit how much it meant to him. And, somehow, because it meant so much to him, it meant more to me too.
There’s one other Jim story, one that has nothing to do with race cars: When Margo and I bought our first house, shortly after we got married, it was this awesome and ancient little tudor a couple of blocks away from where Jim lived. Jim was very eager to help so he came over and lent me his lawnmower. After a couple of weeks, I was able to go out and buy my own lawnmower so I offered to bring it back to his house. He insisted that he would come over and pick it up and a few minutes later he did.
Well, my father-in-law was at the house at the time, and my father-in-law is a wonderful soul who, well, he’s worth about 10 other blog posts. Jim came by to pick up his lawnmower, and he struck up a conversation with my father-in-law because Jim’s that kind of guy. Somehow the topic of how you change the oil on a lawnmower came up. Jim, of course, knew how to do it, but he was too nice to interrupt, and so he watched as my father in law demonstrated the procedure. And Jim then watched my father-in-law dump about a gallon of gasoline in the back seat of his car.
At which point my father-in-law said, “Well, don’t smoke a cigarette in there.”
And to tell you the kind of guy Jim is, that’s how we would sometimes end conversations. “Well, don’t smoke a cigarette in there.”
* * *
Mechelle’s story is, in some ways, similar to Jim’s, only her passion has been for women’s sports, and particularly women’s basketball. She is, without a doubt, the nation’s leading expert on women’s basketball. Unlike other “Nation’s leading experts,” she has countless other interests, including but not limited to: The St. Louis Cardinals, horror movies, Laverne and Shirley, The Twilight Zone (she is probably the nation’s leading expert on The Twilight Zone as well), figure skating, the Miss America pageant and the Olympics.
Mechelle was also an editor when I first knew her, and she was an excellent editor. It’s a funny thing, I have found great editors do not have many things in common. Some are gruff, some philosophical, some direct, some intense. One of the best editors I’ve ever worked for would call me into his office and talk to me for an hour about ethereal things, and I would walk out dazed and baffled and (somehow) smarter than when I began. And another editor, the best I ever had, would hang up on reporters and threaten them and challenge them and drink with them and say things like, “The best thing I can say about this story is that it’s in English.”
But every good editor I have ever known is driven. There’s an energy a good editor has — he/she wants a C story to be a B- and and B story to be a B+ and there’s no such thing as an A+ story. Mechelle was a driven editor — opinionated but patient, utterly selfless and yet not at all uncertain. She was a force of nature, really. We have had one fight in the 12 years we have been friends, and it was when we were both exhausted beyond reason, and we each felt certain that the other simply could not understand. I had never believed that bit of TV shlock that fights could bring people closer. But that’s what happened. We’re very different. And we are a lot alike.
In any case, Mechelle, like Jim, loved words, and she wanted to write, though it was not as easy a transition for her as it was for Jim. All the confidence she had as an editor was tougher to come by as a writer. She knew that she could write well enough, but it always seemed to me that she did not want to be just another writer. She had something to say. And if she was not good enough to say it, then she did not want to do it.
Well, we would talk for hours and hours about how talented she was as a writer, how clearly her passion for the subject came through, and I would seem to get through, but it can be hard to break away and do what you want to do with your life. Finally, though she broke through. She became a writer, focusing on women’s sports, especially women’s basketball, but she could write about anything. She wrote one of my favorite pieces ever about George Brett. She wrote several pieces that seemed to get to the heart of Tom Watson.
And, of course, her women’s basketball work is unmatched. She has such a deep fascination for the women’s game — how far it has come, the growing pains along the way, what’s beautiful about the sport — and, more, she has this amazing sense of history. That’s what makes her writing special. She can describe the action well, and she can tell stories about the people well, but what makes her stuff so unique, and so wonderful is that she sees it more clearly than anyone I know. Buck O’Neil always used to say that when when he saw a young player, he would think of an old player — this guy’s swing is a little bit like Ted Williams, this guy’s pitching motion is a bit like Hilton Smith, and so on and so on.
When Mechelle watches Connecticut or UConn or Duke or Kansas State play basketball in front of large crowds, she thinks of all those who did not play basketball because they didn’t think girls were supposed to play sports. She thinks of all those great women’s players who, like the Negro Leaguers of the 1930s and ‘40s, played in the shadows. She thinks of moments when things began to change. She thinks of all the angry letters she has received from disturbed people who find women’s basketball unwatchable and boring and insulting to their very existence, and naturally they feel they must tell somebody about it. She thinks of all the little girls, like my two young daughters, who grow up in a world where women athletes can be sports heroes too.
I feel those things in her writing. And, through her, I feel them in my own.
* * *
David will only buy paperback books. He buys a lot of them, reads a lot of them, but only paperbacks, it’s something he believes in deeply. I remember once asking if he’d read “The Da Vinci Code,” which is probably the only mystery (if it is a mystery) that I have read the last 10 years. I only read it because it had become such a cultural phenomenon. Anyway, I assumed he had read it (David mostly reads mysteries) and he said no because it was not in paperback.
I pointed out to him that, at the time, the hard cover Da Vinci Code was selling for like $5.99 in stores, which made it CHEAPER than paperbacks. He admitted this was a good point. Then I asked him if he would buy the book, and he said no.
“I only buy paperbacks,” he said.
I could tell you a lot of stories about David. Anyone who knows him could. There was this one time, last year, he was up in the press box and a foul ball headed back to toward Royals Hall of Famer Frank White. Frank, as you know, was renowned for his fielding. He won eight gold gloves. He had his Royals number 20 retired and placed on the scoreboard — there have been other great ones like Bill Mazeroski and Roberto Alomar and so on, but there has never been a BETTER defensive second baseman. Anyway, the ball headed right for Frank White, now a Royals announcer.
And Frank hit the deck. Just ducked out of the way and went to the floor like it was an incoming shell coming in. For a moment there was silence. And then, suddenly, that familiar voice of David’s rang out.
“Take that guy’s number off the scoreboard,” he shouted.
And so on. David is, in many ways, the purest sportswriter I know in that, ever since I have known him, he has chased games. It never mattered who was playing. It never mattered what sport they were playing. He would be there. He would write about it. Boxing? Track? Soccer? Baseball? Basketball? Tennis? Football? Yeah. Recreation? High schools? Small colleges? Big colleges? Pros? Yeah. Big crowds? Small crowds? No crowds? Yeah. I always tell young sportswriters that the one thing that infuriates me most of all is when someone, anyone, mails in an effort because they believe, somehow, that they are above the event. David is my living example. He has always been thrilled to be writing about sports. And he has always been proud of it too.
We sat next to each other at Royals games for years. And, by sitting next to each other, we talked about everything — from music to politics, family to books, George Brett to Mendy Lopez, Joe Montana to Elvis Grbac — and I could not help but feed off his constantly shifting energy level. He would usually begin every game believing the Royals would win, and this heartfelt belief would often last about four pitches when he would suddenly announce, “The Royals are going to get blown out.” He would label young players as future legends and total busts, often during the same at-bat. He would talk brightly about signs of hope and, an inning later, admit that the team was doomed forever. David will tell you, he’s an optimist, but he’s nobody’s fool.
Over the years, I cannot begin to tell you how many people I have run across who have said: “Oh, you work at the Kansas City Star, please say hi to David for me.” They remembered that David covered their son or daughter, nephew or niece, brother or cousin. They talked about a time he had covered their small college when nobody else at the big paper seemed to care. They talked about how much they like reading other people’s stories … but David was the person they knew.
* * *
I write about these three friends — Jim Pedley, Mechelle Voepel, David Boyce — because in the last few months they have all be laid off at The Kansas City Star. Jim and David were laid off on Monday. They are not alone. There are many more — close friends and people I barely even know — who have been let go at the paper. Around the country, there are many, many, many more. It is unfair. It is destructive. It is infuriating. It is pain.
And it is the times we live in.
One thing you hear all the time is that the mainstream media does a terrible job in this country, and I feel that way quite often. But there are so many passionate people in media too, people who give their hearts to the job, people who want only to break news, and tell stories, and shine a light on injustice, and make people laugh, and document the times we live in. More and more of them are being let go.The point here is not to talk about why it’s happening. The point here is not to speculate where it’s all going. The point here is not even to talk about what we’re losing. People are losing the jobs all over the country in all sorts of businesses, in all walks of life. My brother lost his job. One of my best friends lost his job. Your friends too. You can still read about some of that in the daily newspaper.
No. The point here is only to tell you about good friends. They will all land on their feet, of course. They are talented, and they are passionate, and they will find the next thing. I guess the point is that I’ll miss working with them. I already do.
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This week, 24 talented people will leave the newsroom where I work. Most of them won’t find work in this business. Most of them are resigned to it. Some of them are happy to get out. But mostly it’s just sad.
Thought I would land on my feet but this economy doesn’t allow for happy endings. Awards and talent mean nothing and so does passion. You see all these reporters who go through the motions and don’t care. It bothered me working around and with them and now it is just mind boggling they continue to work while I and others with a passion can’t find work.
Wow. What a great piece. Even though you say you set out just to tell the story of three fine journalists, you’ve provided a profound lesson on what it means to be working in such a tough economic climate; the fact that the people losing their jobs are not just nameless statistics but real people with real lives and facing a real problem. This is one of the more powerful pieces I’ve read here.
Just one little error, though. You listed Frank White as having #10 retired by the Royals, but I thought White was #20 while Dick Howser was #10.
When my father left the Akron Beacon Journal to strike it out on his own in New York City, his friends threw a “retirement party” for him. (He was only 38.) I remember how many people attended: the sportswriter who was the pitcher on the worst softball team in Northeast Ohio, the reporter who promised me a Coke if I would periodically shout, “Put Chaney in!” at the games, the grizzled editor who knew all about Star Trek episodes (I was somewhat geeky at 12), and they presented him with a gold watch, with the “TI” in “TIMEX” crossed out and “RO” written in black permanent marker. It had “Polish engraving,” (*) meaning they had printed “BUFFUM” on one of those punch-wheel label things and stuck it across the face of the watch.
I think what makes a person enjoy and thrive in the newspaper business is a sincere and innate ability to connect with people: not just the people in the newsroom, but the people they are writing articles and stories about. And this ability is what makes their relationships with the people they work with special and enduring. My father still exchanges messages with people he worked with 30+ years ago.
I have seen people leave jobs at my place of employment or others, but I’ve seen few “retirement ceremonies” like the one my father got after working at the paper for only 10 years. It sounds like “newspaper guys” haven’t really changed all that much in character, be they in Akron, Kansas City, or anywhere else.
Moving piece, Joe.
(*) This is a perfectly acceptible joke in Northeast Ohio in the mid-seventies. Some things DO change.
This all definitely sucks. I think it serves as a perfect companion piece to the second half of last week’s B.S. Report podcast with Chuck Klosterman as a guest.
It does seem odd that the media landscape seems to be changing so rapidly. I mean it seemed pretty obvious that the newspaper industry had not figured out how to cash in on the changes the internet brought, and Bill Simmons does make a pretty logically sound case for Craig’s List negating the need for classifieds, but to think that an entire industry seems entirely unable to adjust to the changing technological landscape still seems baffling. Maybe papers need to all put three or four crosswords in them to make us want to buy them (because doing the crossword on the internet is totally lame).
Brilliant piece, Joe. I knew who Mechelle was, but not the other two, which surprised me (even not being from KC). But this is definitely one of those “interesting times” you DON’T want to live in that the old Chinese proverb is supposed to warn you about (and, no, I don’t know the veracity of that supposed “maxim”…).
A lot of things in this world are changing faster than some (most?) of us can relate to. Life has always been about cruel, unfair reality, and finding ways to adapt…but we do lose something along the way…
I got out of the newspaper business about 10 years ago because I had reached a point where it became apparent my opportunity for advancement was nil. I love to write and loved covering sports at all levels (high school, college and pros). The people involved and the competition and the nightly dramas that unfolded were (and, I imagine, still are) fantastic. Walking away from my newspaper was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made and, to this day, a small part of me wonders if it was the right decision.
But every time I question my choice, I go back to the town where I worked. The 48-page daily (64-plus on Sunday) with the 5-8 page sports section (12-16 pages on Sunday) has become a 24-page daily with nearly half of it ads. The sports section for which I wrote has diminished to less than three pages during the week, 6-8 on Sunday with almost all of it wire stories. The same paper that staffed every state college football game when I started in the late 80s (roughly 6 a week) now takes wire reports from every game. Its high school coverage, which was the best for a paper its size that I’ve ever seen, now relies on phoned-in box scores and an occassional feature story.
A few weeks ago, I spoke with the sports editor who hired me for the first time in five years. He still works at the paper, but said he fully expects the paper to shut its doors within six months. We chatted a bit more and parted ways. As the days have passed since then, I realized that — at least in the case of my old paper — it’s kind of like finding out a close friend or relative you haven’t seen in years is deathly ill. You visit and marvel at how much it has changed. And while you will mourn its passing, and grieve for the people who are hurting, you have enough distance to know that the entity you remembered and loved actually died years ago … they’re just finally getting around to burying the corpse.
I will most definitely miss David’s work. He’s provided me with that connection to Northwest Missouri State University (my alma mater) when I haven’t been able to keep in touch with Maryville.
What a great writer. This is sad.
I hope some of the talented and passionate people become teachers — not necessarily teachers of journalism, but maybe English, writing, history teachers. Our kids need to spend more of their school hours with the best.
This is clearly the perfect spot for me to post, because my husband left journalism several years ago and became an English teacher. He used to talk about wanting to “change the world” through journalism, reporting on stories that would enlighten the public, make people’s lives better. There were times that really happened, like when he reported on a budget scam that had been going on for several years. But most of the time it was those small stories– covering the committee meetings, the high school graduations, the heroic actions of local pets or the tragedies of local families. It was a grind, and the pay was pretty pathetic– he ended up going into debt just to pay for gas and food. Ten articles every week, and lots of late meetings to cover. But over time he built relationships with the people in town, and they learned that he respected them, and respected his profession. They began to open up to him, and he learned much more than he could ever fit into a story, but that colored every article he wrote. When he left, his co-workers put together a framed and matted mock front page of the paper with every story an inside joke or reference to Matt. It was the sweetest good-bye party I’ve ever seen.
Now he teaches English to high school students, and passes on his passion and his energy to them. It’s still a grind, and there are still late nights– this time grading papers instead of covering stories. But he depends on his ability to build relationships with people, just as he did as a reporter. And he really does see the changes he makes in the lives of his students, every day.
“Fred Jones, Pt. 2″ by Ben Folds. Find it, listen to it and think of these 3 fine journalists.
This sucks. I’m really disappointed that the business people in the newspaper industry collectively made so many miscalculations (non-calculations?) over the last 10-15 years which has led to this parade of good writers and great people walking away.
Wow, I think I ran the gamut of emotions reading that piece. Great stuff as always Joe, Sounds like you’re quite blessed to have these 3 as your friends and colleagues. Here’s hoping everyone can find a port in this storm.
Pistol Pete has it right. I suppose that it was fortunate it lasted as long as it did; other industries (like autos) have been going through this for a long time.
I left journalism a few months ago and am still looking for the next thing. I don’t regret my time in the industry, because I met some unforgettable characters much like Joe describes and I made some great friends. But I don’t regret leaving either, even though the future is uncertain.
Nice stuff as per usual. Sad as it is, its the nature of the beast where print media is concerned.
BTW, you obviously don’t know enough Britons because they are simply effing mad about cars and racing in general.
As a sportswriter, had an opportunity to work along side both Mechelle and David. Once, while covering a game at Mizzou, I mistakenly used the Star’s space in the media room and Mechelle never said a word. As I got to know her more, I enjoyed reading her stories.
David was always a good guy. We’d run into each other at small colleges throughout the midwest and he’d always remember you like a close friend. His smile was infectious.
My best to both these talented writers. Damn this economy.
I had an idea of where this was headed, and unfortunately, that’s where it ended up. But like you said, these three will land on their feet. And no matter how much the industry changes, you’ll always have those friends.
[...] Good friends ? Joe Posnanski By Joe Posnanski And, by sitting next to each other, we talked about everything ? from music to politics, family to books, George Brett to Mendy Lopez, Joe Montana to Elvis Grbac ? and I could not help but feed off his constantly shifting energy level. … People are losing the jobs all over the country in all sorts of businesses, in all walks of life. My brother lost his job. One of my best friends lost his job. Your friends too. You can still read about some of that in the daily … Joe Posnanski – http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/ & [...]
David’s articles and comments in the press box will be missed.
very sad. and perplexing. i know the industry is more complicated than i know (not being part of it), but if there’s two mind-boggling things about the newspaper business, it would be (1) giving away content for free, and (2) laying off the talent.
i’m 28, and we get the paper at my house every day because i’m old-timey like that, but i must visit kansascity.com 10 times a day, and would gladly pay a small amount for that privelege every month/year… thing is, it’s free, and every time the subscription bill comes for the “real” paper, it makes me wonder why we don’t cancel.
i know the ads are an important part of the equation, but take away the talent and i’d imagine the eyeballs go away too. it will be sad if we lose you, joe, but it’s nice to know your blog is worth a billion dollars and you’ve got a few other gigs going (something about a book and sports illustrated cover story???).
I think it is telling that this blog entry about the fate of the newspaper industry elicited only 19 comments so far. An article on whether Jim Rice or Bert Blyleven deserves to be in the HOF would have generated ten times that amount. It shows that despite the lamentations, most people don’t really care about the industry’s fate. Indeed, despite my best efforts, my 16 year old son has never, and now probably will never, pick up a newspaper. Sad but true.
I guess the thing that makes me sad about the state of the newspaper business is that it didn’t have to be this way.
The current situation was foreseeable as soon as major dailies started buying into the “information wants to be free” hype and giving away their product.
I have mixed feelings about the decline of newspapers. In my own dealings with newspaper writers I’ve found a shocking number of them to be incredibly arrogant, underinformed, and judgmental. I’m not looking to start a fight. That’s just been my experience. I’ve been left with a strong feeling that the consumer will benefit from a thinning of the herd, with more readers migrating to the journalists and outlets that survive. I guess we’re going to find out soon enough if that’s correct.
the mere idea that i won’t have a newspaper to read gives me chills.
who will tell the stories that aren’t profitable?
who will shed light in dark corners of corruption and cover ups?
in my city of boston, i remember the work the Globe did on the FBI/Whitey Bulger connection and wonder what would happen today?
what will happen in 4 years?
will citizens realize that the newspapers are the only real source to get news out?
how many websites will be able to bring news from all over the globe from reliable sources?
i love the internet. i love that i have access to virtually every voice in the world that wants to be heard.
but i feel that there has to be ways for newspapers to stay in business and not choke to death on the success of their own local websites.
i’m upset about the state of the newspaper of today.
i’m dismayed at the lack of a newspaper tomorrow.
I don’t subscribe to The Star because it’s on the internet, which I pay several hundred dollars a year for. I have considered subscribing to The Star just because I hate to see this happening and want to do my part. My wife and I buy the paper on Sundays and she always hands me the sports page, which I end up thumbing through quickly because typically I’ve already read the articles online. I don’t really have a point to my comment, just that it is easy to see why this is happening. I’m really glad to see that Joe has diversified with his blogs, writing for SI, etc. What frightens me is losing Joe and Jason and David and Mechelle and Jim to other areas to where they are focusing on other teams. I love my Royals and part of that is because of Joe. I think I just talked myself into subscribing to The Star. Hopefully others will too.
Andy (#21): Joe just posted this late yesterday and my comment is #23, about usual for the time span between original post and said #comment. Perhaps I am wrong but I have never seen the number of comments be even close to 10X this (230?). I’d say these columns by Joe are what brings most of us to this blog. If it were about MLB HOF candidates nearly all of the time I would soon lose all interest.
Joe – So sorry about your friends. I haven’t a clue what the future will bring. When the horse and buggies went down the tubes while the automobile was becoming available and affordable, the buggy and harness manufacturers had to learn or adapt to a new trade. I wish all of you/us out there in this current economic mess lots of inner strength to keep adapting and moving forward. I guess it’s becoming more true….”Life’s a bitch, then you die.”
Good post again Joe. But now I’m going to mess with you. When she watches Connecticut or UConn? I thought you were then going to say ‘when she watches Duke or the Blue Devils, Tennessee or the Volunteers’ etc.
I hate watching the death of newspapers. I rely on the KC Star to cover local politics and business. Without that kind of coverage how are we to know what is going on? The less we know the less we are part of being an informed and functional democracy.
I usually open the sports pages first every morning and really enjoy the local coverage. Yet I’m also concerned about the lack of local political coverage and what it means for us locally.
Pretty much the only reason I susbscribe to the Star is for the sports page. I can get most of the other news from some source, but always enjoyed the local coverage from you, Jason, Sam, Blair, Bob, David, Jim and Mechelle among others.
By cutting as deep as they are, they are giving me more of an excuse to dump my subscription.
Just one shout out to Jim, as a fan of open wheel racing, I found it refreshing that the Star would have somebody covering that on a routine basis. I guess I will have to stick with espn.com now or something like it.
In no way am I an expert on how to run a newspaper, and I know that a major shift in the way we gather information has taken/is taking place, and I know that economic hardships are a major factor right now, but no David Boyce = a loss of a connection to local sports. That is one thing I know for sure. I hope the Star realizes this, and has taken this in to account. Good luck to David.
Joe, thank you for such a moving piece. I think I will go buy a newspaper now.
I am 31 years old. Since I have been in college, I have had my own subscription to the newspaper. Even when I was at Mizzou, I had the KC Star delievered to my dorm every day. When I lived with my parents after college, we had two papers delivered (one for me and one for my dad).
I completely understand how the newspaper industry has gotten to this point. The info is free online, as it is everywhere else. The old saying that a newspaper has yesterday’s news today is true.
But reading online is nothing like reading a real newspaper. I love sitting at the table with my wife on Sunday mornings, thumbing through the whole paper, picking out what we want to see and then passing it to the other.
I hate knowing that there will be s day, likely some day soon, when having the paper in my driveway in the morning will be a thing of the past. That really saddens me. I hope that many of the talented writers find other outlets so we can continue to read their work, although it won’t be the same.
It does suck when your friends get laid off, especially when you know they’re really good at their jobs and the only reason they’re being laid off is because of the financial circumstances of the particular times you live in.
That said, I think the newspapers have had the writing on the wall for well over five years now. We live in the Information age now, where everything is real time. Everything that happens is on Youtube ten minutes later.
In such an age, why would a medium that delivers you YESTERDAY’s news still be effective? And yes, people will say that a newspaper is about more than the news, it’s about the columnists and the editorial slant and your local stuff etc etc etc.
I started reading the news online in 1996. Back then I still got plenty of phonecalls from newspapers asking me if I wanted to sign up for two years. And I always asked them “Why would I sign up for your print version when I can read your online version?”
The lady who tried to sell me a paper ofcourse never had an answer.
(And this isn’t even a paid vs free scenario. If something offers me interesting enough information online, I gladly pay for it. I’m a sponsor of BR, I’m an ESPN insider and a few other sites. If a newspaper is interesting enough that I feel it’s worth buying, I’d buy it online.)
The problem is that the entire internet reports the news now. And not just the news, but sports reports and car reports and every other kind of report. And in many cases, they do it better, and fresher, than the paid reporters do.
In these circumstances, while I feel sorry for people who lose their jobs, any people, I can’t help but wonder if maybe the newspaper should have tried to adapt their business model? And if maybe the journalists shouldn’t have tried to expand their market? Embrace the Internet and carve out a section there?
Btw, this phenomenon will not be limited to just the newspaper industry. In 20-50 years, every form of information will be digital. Kindle and devices like it will wipe out the printed book in two decades. Writers will simply write and spread their words digitally. (Stephen King was quite a pioneer when he started dabbling in that himself.)
Magazines will go the same way, probably within the next five.
On a side tangent : it’s not really the MEDIUM that’s killing the newspaper business. If people wanted to read the paper, but they wanted to read it online rather than in paper, they could and would pay for the online version.
It’s that the papers can’t seem to keep up with the demand for real time information and more importantly, TRUE information, rather than the slanted “Aw shucks, I’ll just put up a funny story and ramble a bit about yesterday’s game and call it a column and get paid” stuff that’s been considered news the last few decades.
If smart, funny guys with a blog are constantly shooting holes in the crap your sports reporters put in their columns, is that the fault of digital vs paper? Or the fault of reporters not providing the kind of information that people WANT these days?
I’m not so sure I’d pay for a newspaper subscription online. I do subscribe to a paper now, but it isn’t necessarily for the information. As everyone else has already pointed out, I can get the same information for free online. I pay for a subscription because it is the highlight of my morning, asking the dog is she got the paper yet, seeing her ears go back at the recognition, sending her outside to bring it in. Then, opening it up with a cup of coffee, reading the sports, reading the front section, reading the local news and opinion columns, reading the police reports. Smelling the paper, folding the pages…I could go on and on.
During the day, I keep up with what’s going on through online sources, rss feeds of columnists I like (ahem Joe), etc. But it’s a sterile medium. I don’t get the same enjoyment out of it (with the obvious exception of your blog, Joe. I wish it was included in paper form in my daily paper, the St Paul Pioneer Press) as I do out of the delivered paper. When we lose that, it will be a sad day for everyone, the community, the people like me who derive enjoyment out it because of what it means to their life, and people like Joe, who work in the industry and see their friends/colleagues/themselves even lose a job they love because of the advancement of technology.
I hope the printed work survives in some form. It will be a disappointing day when EVERYTHING has an “e” in front of it.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned this yet, but there’s one thing that newspapers have that the internet will never be able to replicate – the john. It’s too awkward to take a laptop in there, and it’s just plain a pain in the tush to read anything on an iPhone or what have you.
Chris in Dallas makes an excellent point. Although I don’t have a Kindle, from what it sounds like, they’re versatile enough to read in there as well…just don’t tell anyone about it.
This was an amazing piece.
I feel horribly for everyone who lost their jobs. Best of luck all around.
Not that it matters, but there are at least three causes, right?
1) Television and cable news infotainment picked off the semi-readers.
2) The internet provides another competing activity, particularly
seducing those who like putting in their own 2 cents in this form,
a quicker and surer thing than a “letter to the editor.”
3) The Depression, which is a [nearly] equal-opportunity unemployer.
In 1960-61, NYC had 7 daily newspapers (+WSJ), and there were days (the election, Bay of Pigs) when I tried to real them all, for all the competing opinions. (Dorothy Schiff’s Post, with Kempton, Lerner, Shannon, etc., was best.) Now my college-age son almost never looks at the paper. . . but he doesn’t get news and thoughtful opinion from the teevee or internet, either. . .
We’re losing the traditional sources of social glue that gave communities (and the nation) important things in common. . . .
Kindle is pretty good in the john. It’s pretty good everywhere, really.
To me the huge advantage of the newspaper is that it’s so easy to scan it quickly. Read a headline here, a paragraph there, switch to another story, flip the page, flip back. You can pick up a lot in a short time. Newspaper reading has a nice flow.
Online news is a grind by comparison. The time it takes to load pages and the fact that you never catch a glimpse of one story while you’re reading another. It’s so rigid. There are no surprises. It’s not much fun.
I’m saddened to hear of good writers losing their jobs. But it’s the reality of the world, in the same way that the Model “T” really destroyed the blacksmithing industry.
Consider what it means in this day and age to be a professional writer. There are dozens of blogs out there written by perfectly fine folks who on their good days (or the professional writer’s bad days) are just as good, especially since they tend not to have time tables and can thus rewrite and craft until satisfied. Those who are competing with the bloggers have to clearly exceed the free content, and they usually have to do it on a deadline, week in and week out. I am by no means a total internet geek, but I know of more worthwhile sports blogs than I have time to read. Even with Fire Joe Morgan being painfully silent these days, there are still more worthwhile articles than I have time.
In order for the newspapers and magazines to survive, they need to have at least one (if not both) of two things: they need to present information faster than the competition, or they need to present information better than the competition. And they need to find ways to get paid for it.
I believe that the reason the newspaper industry is dying is because they don’t realize the value of their online content. For example, if the Los Angeles Times limited access to 90+% of its online stories to subscribers of some sort, then T.J. Simers would have a lot fewer readers (I know, lots of you think that would be a good thing). But the readers he did have would be paying for the privilege.
Would the KC paper make more money from charging for its online only content and keeping its writers on staff and writing? I don’t know. I do know that offline cannot compete with online economically. It takes vanishingly close to no cost at all to deliver online content anywhere. But a newspaper requires a printing press, paper, ink, people to operate the equipment, people to package up the newspapers, people to deliver the newspapers, rubber bands and plastic bags for rainy days. Before you have even started looking at the writers, you have a huge burden of overhead.
I make my living (in one way or another) from computer games. We’ve faced similar problems in my industry. These days almost every game can be downloaded off the internet. But it can’t be downloaded for free. Once upon a time my wife and I lived in our dream city holding nearly our dream jobs. We made online only games, and charged roughly $2/hour to play them. And The Sierra Network actually made money. Then Microsoft started the Internet Gaming Zone, which gave away a lot of really crappy implementations of games for free. The zone, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to make money, and had none of the high end games that drove most of TSN’s development expenses. But it siphoned off enough of the lower end users of simple card and board games so TSN went from profitable to unprofitable, and TSN eventually went out of business. You can’t compete with free unless you’re a WHOLE lot better than they are. And the blogosphere makes it hard to compete in areas of popular opinion, especially sports. Heck, in the last elections, where once I would have been looking at newspaper web sites, or maybe even looking at out of town newspapers the next day, I now go straight to the Secretary of State’s office or the Registrar’s office and read the election results from the horse’s mouth, more accurately and faster. Thus has the newspaper become marginalized by technology.
I would *love* to see some newspapers, instead of laying off reporters and writers, give them a choice: work online for free and see if we drive enough revenue to keep you onboard, or be laid off. And then seal off online content. If the writer is good enough (and in many locations that merely means competent and covering the smaller college or even high school game of local interest that none of the wire services can afford to have a local stringer cover) then people will read. Will enough read to keep the paper afloat? I don’t know; that’s why I call it an experiment. But giving away for free that which hitherto papers charged for is no way to stay in business.
Having sat next to David Boyce at quite a few Pittsburg State football games, I can most definitely hear him dogging on Frank White.
Perhaps my favorite Boyce story comes from Pitt State’s 2003 home win over St. Cloud. It was the second week of the season and St. Cloud was supposed to come into Carnie Smith Stadium and challenge the Gorillas.
Pitt State, known predominantly as a program that runs the ball, opened the game with an unexpected 50-yard bomb for a touchdown.
The receiver hadn’t reached the end zone before Boyce made his declaration.
“This team is going to win the National Championship.”
That team, of course, did not.
David Boyce put his passion into small college football in the Fall each year. He is a blue-collar writer and someone who loves walking through the parking lot before and after seeing familiar faces, and meeting new people. I always enjoyed reading people comments of David’s work, because it never mattered, who ever criticized him always said he was a fan of the other school. He has that way to be unbiased. He never had a dog in the fight. He is a KU grad from the William Allen White School of Journalism — he did not go to a d2 school. He was a reporter who did his job and did it well. He told me on more than one occasion that he fought to get coverage in the Star for the MIAA, for small college FB. He knows it has a place in a large regional newspaper. David, thank you for all your hard work. Joe, thank you for writing an excellent piece about your friends.
Thanks, Joe, for those insights. Sorry for the “losses” the news industry is feeling…they become all of OUR losses, too.
Thanks especially for your insights on Mechelle V. She really IS the best, IMO. As an otherwise-lonely fan of Women’s Hoops (no personal acquaintances share my enthusiasm), I relish her writings. Mechelle has given A Voice to the game with her wonderful blend of eloquence, grace, knowledge, and humor.
David will really be missed around the MIAA. Many times I heard him declare a game over in the first five minutes. He was a big part of the MIAA tourney in Kansas City and I think it was good that he was able to cover the entire tourney this year instead of going off to the Summit tourney. But that was part of what made David, David. He would go where ever there was a good game. If I’m right he covered small colleges (football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and an occassional softball tourney), UMKC, Wichita State, Missouri State, the Royals, helped out with KU, K-State and Mizzou, did a weekly column on the NBA, covered boxing and team tennis. Is there anyone at the Star that is that diverse in actual game story writing?
Good Luck to David and all that have lost their jobs.
i wonder what people’s reaction will be during the next life changing event (9/11, obama election, man on moon, etc) when you can’t go out and collect newspapers to just dive into it all.
i love the internet. i read everything i can.
but that doesn’t mean i don’t want to have the Times and Globe and Post all at the ready when the world goes to hell or rejoices.
i have thought about this all day and night since yesterday morning.
maybe your new blog will help bring some ideas to light as to what we can do to save the paper or at least make it a viable option in the world…
I have no idea if it helps or not, but whenever I go to the Star’s website, I try to click a few ads. I’m hoping they’re able to get a few cents worth of revenue that way.
I’m 35 years old and never read newspapers or watched TV news: magazines and especially books were always more my pace for learning about the world, although I’ve found enough fascinating people in the blogosphere (you, Joe, very much among them) that I’m unexpectedly current these days. At any rate, I’m a hypocrite to try to share in your pain for the loss of newspapers and reporters … but I do. I think it’s a huge loss for the world.
I don’t know if there’s any model that newspapers could have followed to stay afloat, but if there WAS one, I think it’s the exact opposite of the one they chose. I wish most of them had trimmed by focusing their efforts onto local stories (a la you and especially David Boyce), precisely because that is the one key service the Internet is crappy at. If the Greensboro newspaper where I live was a detailed, lovingly written guide to the city’s and state’s politics and sports and culture, I think I’d actually be motivated to buy the thing. Instead its headlines are what you’d see in USA Today, which means Yahoo.com does its job just fine for free. So why should anyone bother?
#33 — I worked on developing content for the Sony Bookman (yikes!) 17 years ago. Books have certain advantages — they’re portable, don’t require power, never crash, break or malfunction, it’s easy to see the type from any reasonable angle, and everyone knows how to use them. Plus, they’re cheap. (A hardcover book costs $2 to make — the biggest cost publishers look at is the cost of printing books that will go unsold, about 50% on average.) So I’ll wait and see on the Kindle. Americans don’t like to read — that’s why publishers and papers are folding. They also don’t like to pay. But the latter has little to do with the former. Video game attention spans don’t lend themselves to consuming a 300-page novel.
Papers hired second-rate new media consultants 15 years ago or so (the best went into dotnet enterprises). The free on the Net model is the result. But you know what? I wouldn’t pick up a daily if it were free. Matter of fact, I’d for net content before I’d take a free paper. It’s not JUST that news on the net is free, it’s because we spend so much time in front of computers.
Putting the copy on the web was simple and cheap. It just wasn’t thought out. It was done in an era where the profits were expected to take care of themselves, down the road, somewhere (which is why I never got into the dotnet thing, because I couldn’t see where the profit was, and if I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell you to get into the business). There was no real consideration of how to take the brand in extend it into a new media. There’s no reason –none — that, for instance, the KC Star couldn’t be as big as TMZ. You have talent and credibility and standards. TMZ has none of any of these. What you _cannot_ do, and succeed, is just put copy and pictures on the web like evry other paper in the country. You have to put a little thought into the plan, and put a little effort into the execution.
People seem to be under the impression that the Newspapers are lacking in readership. They aren’t. Yes, paper subscriptions have gone down (~18% in 3 years) but online readership has gone up significantly. No, the issue isn’t readers. It’s the business model. It’s the transformation of print dollars into digital dimes. It’s the loss in classified ad revenue, it’s the loss in paid ad sales. It’s the inability to react to the “almost free” business model of Craigslist and Autotrader.
But by far the biggest issue is the failure of local papers to focus on local news. Local news drives local customers to local ads via local search. Over reliance on AP content, which can be accessed anywhere for free on the internet, helped kill local papers. Over reliance on Google for online remnant ads that don’t deliver money and cheapen the paper’s brand was the wrong strategy.
I follow a lot of newspaper people via twitter and I’m still amazed at how much of their work month is spent attending conferences and panels and shows instead of at their respective papers.
I feel for your friends Joe, but the industry has no one to blame but themselves.