RIP to one of our own, one of our best -- Craig Stanke

It took me an entire day to write this after hearing of Craig Stanke's death early Tuesday morning.
The news hit me like a ton of bricks.
Craig was the man who hired me in Jacksonville to work at The Florida Times-Union. In recent years, he has been my immediate boss at CBSSports.com. I've known Craig for over 25 years. He lived in my hometown. His ex-wife's former husband -- sounds weird -- taught at my high school. We used to bump into each other in the local bars, long before I worked for him or with him.
He always had a story. And fun.
In recent years, he would bump into my dad at the local restaurant as my father had a cocktail and Craig, long ago cutting out the drinking, would sip Red Bulls.
My dad would tell me that Craig respected the job I did for him, which was the highest compliment, since Craig was one of the best journalists I know.
He was an ally for his writers.
He trusted us.
He worked with us.
He was ours.
Now he's gone.
Craig made big changes in recent years. Many of them you know.
But he always had fun.
We will miss him big time at CBSSports.com. But we will miss him more as a really good guy. Like my dad said Tuesday night, "Why do all the good ones go early?"
Good question, pop. Because another one sure did Tuesday morning.

 

Couple things I always liked about SF, even though I didn't know him outside of SJ...

1. He was one of the people who really pushed for W.C. Heinz to win the Red Smith Award while Heinz was still alive, and express that he was a little annoyed that APSE wasn't interested in giving it to Heinz until after he had died. And when a couple people wanted to use Death of a Racehorse as a teaching tool here, but no copy was available on-line, SF hand typed the entire piece (making sure every comma was in the right place) into this website. For a few years, it was the only copy available on the web, right here on this website.

2. He talked openly about his personal life here in a very honest and mentoring way, even though I'm not sure he viewed it that way. I think it was just the kind of person who was at peace with his life, and was comfortable talking about it, whether it was dealing with his divorce, his decision to stop drinking, his kids, the complexities of balancing work and home life. For whatever reason, I've always remembered him talking about his divorce, and how hard he worked to be friendly and civil with his ex-wife, and how proud he was when he no longer had to pay spousal support, and that he'd never missed a payment in however many years. Those are sort of raw, honest and real details to share with strangers, but it made him seem like a very real person to me.

Here are a couple examples of just how smart he was when talking about journalism too, a subject he obviously loved and never grew tired of discussing, debating, and learning from others.

On branding...

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/3087155/

On 30 years in the business...

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/3087155/

On whether or not Esquire had pushed the bounds of nonfiction too far with the lede on a story....

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/1921345/

On the practical realities of sports editors "editing" and "mentoring."

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/1005307/

On spnited when he died...

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/2997861/


So sad. We've lost an SportsJournalists.com titan.

 

I learned about this awful, awful news earlier today and quickly posted something on Facebook to the effect that I was proud to have been his colleague, an erstwhile competitor and, above all, proud to have been his friend. I see from the posts in this thread that I'm not alone.

I had know Craig for 26 years but, unfortunately, got together only at APSE or IRE functions after I left the LA Herald Examiner and he left the Times, then not at all after I left Sports. He was Bill Dwyer's favorite whipping boy, at least in APSE settings, and Bill would always get a laugh by throwing out "Stanke" as a punchline to his myriad of stories about his LAT shop. Totally humorous at first but the better you got to know either of them, you came to realize that Bill only picked on people he liked and respected. And that he had both in abundance for "Stanke."

As I said, we hadn't seen each other in many a year, but we kept in touch through SJ, where he was, as it's been said, this site's most respected -- if not most important -- voice. I think that mantle now falls to FrankRidgeway who, I'm certain, knows he's got mighty huge shoes to fill.

Man, this has been a tough stretch. First Mike Kahn, then Van MacKenzie, Ron "Spnited" Drogo, now Craig "SF_Express" Stanke. Feels like that Great Scorekeeper in the Sky is building himself one incredible Sports staff. Only reason I can think of for all four of them leaving us so early.

RIP, Craig. And heartfelt condolences to his family.

 

"I've always enjoyed hiring and working with younger people who want to get better -- even long ago when I was one of them.

Pride in the product still matters, and having fun still matters. In my best places, the core did everything together, and if there was a fight -- and there are going to be among a group of talented people -- it was forgotten 10 minutes after it was over.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rather have a group of 7s or 8s, maybe even some 5s or 6s, who bust their ass, are trying to move ahead and are good people than a group of 9s and 10s who can take it or leave it, are prima donnas and assholes to boot."

One of his last posts.

Craig SF_Express Stanke will be missed. Take that to the bank.

 

Very recently, I had the privilege of watching -- from a vantage point too complex to get into here -- this very thing happen, and he handled it like a maestro. The pieces fell into place as those under his watch came to the conclusion he wanted them to reach all along, as if it were their idea and not his. We had a very brief chat about it, and I offered my congratulations by calling him clever, as I recall.

"Cagey veteran," he replied.

It was a nice little moment, and one that obviously rings even truer to me now than when it happened, when it seemed like just another in a series of moments of Craig being spot-on with his guidance. I didn't realize it would be the last one I would have a virtual front-row seat from which to see. Thanks for helping me remember it, Gary.

 

That's flattering, Pete, but given my glass-half-empty mentaility compared with Stanke's more upbeat approach, the way I looked at it today is that I now must be on the SJ short list to go to the big pagination terminal in the sky. Thankfully, Ron and Craig apparently died in their sleep, and I would take that fate with gratitude.

 

Geez, Frank, you're sounding like Jerry Molloy talking about Leber's Funeral Home in Union City: "I walked by there today and they had a picture of me in the window with a sign that said, 'Coming Attraction!'

 

Hudson County humor, I have to love it.

 

Years ago when this site was in its infancy, I took special interest in the handle SF_Express. His posts made so much sense. I tried figuring out who it was. I figured he must have been in South Florida. Then, I realized he probably worked at one time at the Sun Sentinel where I started in 2004. Then, I figured out he worked as CBS Sports.com. And sure enough I had known the name for years.
Then when I started working for Demand Media, we interacted. We became Facebook friends a few years ago. He even had passed on information about me to his boss. I was fortunate to meet him once at a Demand Media gathering. He truly was the life of the party -- the one you wanted to talk to, and about anything.
I so am regretting not spending more time with him considering he lived not too far from me.
When I first heard the news in the early afternoon my heart sunk. He's about my age yet he's in great health.
It is a wakeup call for all us -- to make sure our body is healthy.
He touched so many lives. We just didn't expect him to leave us so soon.

 

I posted before that I'd come on again later with my experience with Craig Stanke/SF_Express, so here I am.

My story is somewhat personal, but also touches, profoundly, on the professional -- just the combination that Craig Stanke/SF_Express carried off so well.

It all started with a job interview I had with Stanke and CBSSports.com Managing Editor Mark Swanson in early 2008. To say I wanted, and needed, the job was an understatement, and I was honored to even be getting seriously considered for a producer position at CBSSports.com.

You see, a few months earlier, I'd been involuntarily separated from my previous regular journalism gig at a major metro -- fired from a paper that I loved and a job that I'd dreamed about for years, one that I'd worked hard to get, and one that I'd held for a dozen years. It's something that I still think about, every day, to this day.

Anyway, I go through this interview, and, as had been my practice throughout the ensuing job hunt, I was as open and honest about what had happened as I could be, given what I knew and understood of what went on. (I've since come to think that this was probably a stupid approach, as it no doubt hampered my attempts to work as a staff journalist somewhere again. But, be that as it may, I considered myself a person and a journalist of integrity. I didn't want to lie, and I'd decided not to do so).

So, sure enough, like always, the interview went well enough -- until the question came up about why I'd left my former place of employment, which, as it happened, was somewhere that Stanke had once worked, too.

Halfway through my answer/explanation, all three of us on the phone knew that I wasn't going to make it. First, my voice thickened; then, my words broke; then, my throat closed up, and I couldn't talk at all. Choked up and mortified that I was becoming genuinely emotional in the midst of one of the biggest interviews of my life, I nonetheless tried to soldier on, and told Stanke what had happened, what I thought had happened, and why, and then qualified it all because I still wasn't totally sure of any of it. Hell, I'm still not, and I may never be. It just doesn't matter as much anymore, that's all.

But at the time, it meant everything, and that single event led directly to the darkest and most profoundly impacting period of my life. Stanke listened quietly, then gave me a second to collect myself, then gave me the impression that he understood that, as well as what it took for me to address the matter as I did with them when he said, in a way that I remember considering to be generous and compassionate, especially given the moment, "Well, if you worked there for 12 years, you did something right."

I remember practically sagging with relief in my chair as he said that, and we went on with the rest of the interview, with me thinking that, wow, here was somebody I could and would work for, if only I got the chance. I just hoped it could happen after what had turned into a somewhat embarrassing and suddenly emotionally intimate interview.

Well, it didn't happen. I didn't get the job, but that interview, with another big-time employer, at a time when things were still so raw for me, helped me take important steps forward when simply doing that was still all too difficult.

About two years after that, I sent Stanke a Facebook friend request, asking in a message to him if he remembered who I was and when I'd interviewed. He wrote back and said that yes, he did recall our interview, and he confirmed the friend request.

I knew Stanke was SF_Express on here, and we stayed in occasional contact via Facebook, but, because I've always held to a "don't-ask, don't-tell" policy regarding identities on SportsJournalists.com, I never told him who I was on here.

Moving forward to about four years after our interview, and two years after my FB friend request, to earlier this year, on the "Rushing to be wrong" thread on here. I played devil's advocate regarding CBSSports.com's very public reporting that Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had died when, in fact, he hadn't, just yet.

For obvious reasons, SF_Express maintained a low profile and pretty much kept out of that thread. Apparently prompted by some of my thoughts on the matter about both the issues involved and my stated feeling that perhaps CBSSports.com blogger Adam Jacobi should not have been fired, however, SF_Express sent me, WriteThinking, a series of unsolicited PMs regarding what went on at CBSSports.com both that night, and following, involving both the work flow, and Jacobi.

All of the several messages were measured, thoughtful, considerate, and frankly, as had been the case with me during my job interview, were quite generous, positive and encouraging with regard to Jacobi.

I appreciated that. I also got the feeling that he knew I would.

Because, although he never came right out and asked me, he hinted at it, and I suspect that he knew who I was.

Although these were my only experiences with Stanke, I feel like I know who he was: a passionate, fully engaged journalist with humanity.

God, sadly, those words almost read like an oxymoron these days.

Thank you, Craig Stanke, for your small act of kindness on my behalf, and for all the acts of kindness and wisdom that you so naturally, so willingly, and even so eagerly, shared with all of us as SF_Express.

The world, and certainly, our world, was a better place for your having been in it. There can be no better epitaph to be had, either for you, or your alterego.

 

We all despair re the reason for its being, but the depth and honesty of what's been expressed in this thread remains a prime justification for the amount of time I spend, here.

RIP.