Playing for a sports journalism version of a super team

Sometimes you have to wait several years to share impactful experiences.

My time as a sports reporter for long since defunct GetLocalNews.com is one
of them. I could have shared the experience years ago but it was difficult to do
so publicly for the longest time.

First to set the scene, I respect the entire staff in their role in making our product
superior but I can most accurately describe my experience with my sports cohorts
Brian Cornelius and Chris Navalta since I was most actively involved with them.
However, everyone’s individual effort on the entire staff contributed to the news
organization winning a national Online News Organization general excellence award.

I moved back to California in 1998 after getting my journalism degree from the
University of Nebraska in 1997. I began newspaper career with my hometown
newspaper, the Napa Valley Register. I knew Navalta and Cornelius from afar,
both were sports reporters for the Vallejo Times Herald. The latter eventually
became sports editor.

Navalta eventually moved on to GLN.com, which was a startup online news
organization. The company launched BeniciaNews.com in 2000 and later
VallejoNews.com, in early 2001. Cornelius, who tried to recruit me on various
attempts, joined forces with Navalta. Well, Cornelius convinced me to join him
at GLN.com.  

Being part of something new felt like such an appealing motivator because we
were not inheriting past problems from a prior regime. There was talk of expanding
to neighboring cities. For two years, I firmly believe that Cornelius, Navalta and I
were a sports journalism version of a super team, the term you frequently hear in
reference to NBA teams. We were a three man band covering six high schools,
providing everything from event coverage, features, player bios, photos and
boxscores. I would also be remiss not to mention the regular contributions of
freelancers Marcas Grant and Patrick Creaven. While Cornelius, Navalta and I
were the stars, they were the complimentary players that helped us achieve
greatness in terms of coverage volume that was second to none. When I refer to
coverage volume, it was not just the major sports like football and basketball.
We’re talking badminton and tennis as well as every sport offered.

From March 2001-May 2003, we were an unbeatable combination. Then May 2003
happened, when the company experienced a staff-wide layoff. We sensed that event
would occur at a staff meeting in March. They turned the website into citizen
journalism rather than the labor intensive variety that had been so successful.

We knew the layoff was coming but for me, the timing could not have been
worse. Granted, we got a severance package but I was engaged to my then fiance
and we were closing escrow on our home. I managed to rustle enough freelance
work for seven months to stay afloat before landing back at NVR, which had
purchased the St. Helena Star and Weekly Calistogan. I took over the Upvalley beat
and stayed there for nearly 11 years before changing careers.

For the longest time, I was bitter about our staff-wide layoff, and to a certain extent
still bothers me today. Time, however, has taught me not to dwell on the end, instead
to see the time I had together with Cornelius and Navalta as a great ride. Those guys
were Vallejo natives that had the respect of locals. Since I was the outsider from
Napa, for Cornelius to reach out to me was meaningful. Napa and Vallejo are only
25 minutes apart but in some ways they are colonies apart in terms of lifestyle and
demographics. To this day, I could not be more thankful for how Cornelius and
Navalta along with the communities of Vallejo and Benicia accepted me.

In one respect, I look at our format and say we were ahead of our time. The narrative
of news consumption today is that the print version of newspapers have become
de-emphasized because with rare exception, people receive their news via internet.
If there was breaking news, it would be online immediately as opposed to having it
printed in the next day’s newspaper or putting it online at midnight.

In that era, newspapers had deadlines where the press would have to run at midnight
or whatever time was set. As an online newspaper, we had no hard deadline but it was
generally understood that we were going to get our stories posted as soon as possible.
Nowadays, newspaper deadlines are closer to 9 p.m., which means that late night
football game will not be in the print edition until two days later but stories are going
online immediately.

So much of the narrative today is “24 hour news cycle.” At GLN.com, we were the 24
hour news cycle before the term was en vogue.

When it comes to working relationships in my career, Randy Johnson and Garrett
Whitt are undoubtedly No. 1 because I spent nearly 11 years with them during my
years in St. Helena and Calistoga, where we achieved greatness of our own. However,
my time with Cornelius and Navalta, though cut short for reasons beyond our control,
was like playing on a dream team.