Changes in Memphis

All I'm going to say is Calkins is that good and I have a great respect for him. If you want to make fun of me for that, you have a lot of idle time on your hands, so be my guest.

 

I can't add much more on Calkins, who is perhaps my favorite scribe in the country.

I can add more on Bruce and Robinson. Both are good peeps who work hard and will do well in their new roles, fwiw...

(No, I'm neither one of them.)

 

Agree that Robinson is a good guy and Calkins is a good writer. But this sports section is not what it once was. They used to write a lot of takeouts, really good stuff, and now it's mostly meat and potatoes coverage. The paper went from being one of the best in it's circulation category to being very perfunctory.

 

Thanks for the kind words. I've already started my new gig as Online News Editor and I'm enjoying the heck out of it so far.

I know I'm going to miss Sports. You don't just leave something you've done for 31 years without missing it, but right now I'm focused on creating the framework for something different. I was blessed to work with some extraordinarily creative and bright talents over my 23 years in Memphis and having the opportunity to lead them for 5+ years was a great experience. As I said to the Sports staff in an e-mail last week, we did some great work together and even had a few laughs along the way. The work we did made me proud. The laughter helped keep me sane. I'm flattered that the editors at The Commercial Appeal thought enough of what we did as a staff to want me to lead this Web-first initiative. The Sports staff at The CA made me look very good.

I'm NOT going to miss earlier deadlines or staff cuts or budget cuts, all of which have arrived in the past couple of years. And I'm not going to miss double overtimes on 8 p.m. starts. But I AM going to miss dealing with Sports journalists on a daily basis. The long-held newsroom perception that Sports is just the Toy Department of a newspaper is alive and well. But if that's the case, why do our stories usually lead the Most Read and Most Commented lists on newspaper Web sites? It's because people bring passion to what they read. And you folks (I've already learned to change the pronoun) bring passion to what you report.

Keep doing great work. As just a Sports reader now, I'll look forward to it!

Gary Robinson

 

Classy. I've met Gary only once. Classy then and classy now. The guys at the CA are good people.

 

Apparently, cutting (or rearranging or remixing) some positions in Sports is on the table. At least one reporter may be moved to News. This is not good.

 

Respectfully, I'll defend The CA here. It seems like, in my humble view, it has tried to actually do more of this takeout/feature type stuff in recent years. And The Rules has been reading The CA for a long, long time.

 

I would agree, with the caveat that it seems like there is less enterprise. Keep in mind that I don't view a printed version of the fine pub very often. But, from what I've seen online, there's less "big picture" stuff filling the pages.

 

Perhaps you're right.

I do know this: One day I was in Memphis back in December, I picked up my trusty CA out of that box that says it's read by a half-million Mid-Southerners a day. On the sports front was a long, long feature by Scott Cacciola (I think it was Scott) about some ultimate fighting dude (correct me if I'm wrong) who is a Memphis native and was the paper's sportsman of the year. Here comes the impressive part: It was datelined somewhere in California, where dude lives.

So at least two months ago, this paper wasn't afraid to spend some cash for the right feature story. And while I can't cite specific examples, it seems to me that I've seen some other far-flung datelines, which is impressive for a paper its size under our current economic climate.

 

That's why I said I don't see it every day. Maybe, like everybody else in this business, I look to the past too often. I just remember that series on the chess kids and how great that was. For all I know, they could be cranking those out on a regular basis.
I'm happy to stand corrected.

 

Zack's series on the chess kids was great. Simply great. So was the series on the 1972-73 Memphis State basketball team, which ran back in '03. Simply great.

 

Actually saw Scott's story and thought it was very good. Also was shocked it got the treatment -- the expense and the play -- it got. Happy to see that. But there has not been much of that the last few years. I'm guessing financial restrictions are partly to blame. Overall, the section just feels like it needs to be freshened up, like it lacks punch. And no, I don't read it every day either.
Some of the writers are simply meat and potatoes guys. The section just feels a little stale. Even Calkins, who has been there a long time, seems to just do the same kind of columns. It needs something. But then that probably could be said for a lot of sections these days.