Sports/Desk Editor, Vallejo, Ca.

Here ya go, bpoin:

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/43742/

 

I'm interviewing for this one on Thursday. Anybody know anything about what the newsroom is like?

 

say hi to john swartz. he's a great guy...had many a beer with him...

 

I was a former sports guy at the T-H, and I've only got one thing to say to those who are thinking about working there: RUN AWAY. Run far away!
I won't bore anyone with the gory details of what happened to me, but one prior poster's description of Ted Vollmer and his general attitude is very accurate.
Jack Bungart is a great guy. A Cubs fan (hey, we all have our weaknesses, right? lol!), but a fine human being. His attitude kept me going, more often than not.
The paper staffed Raiders and 49ers home games on a regular basis when I was there, but that practice has stopped. When I was there, the SE I worked under distributed assignments for NASCAR weekend at Sonoma on a piecemeal basis.
One year, a female co-worker had asked him if she could cover NASCAR at Sonoma not because she loved racing, but because her former boss during a college internship she had worked for NASCAR's PR department. She never went back after that year.
That newsroom has a culture of playing favorites on assignments. If you have ideas that go outside the box, chances are good they won't stick.
As for me, I found a happy ending after two years of freelancing. I'm part of a paper that has kicked butt at the AP and SPJ awards, and I even won an award for my reporting in June.
The T-H? Nowhere near the success.

 

Also: Circulation for the T-H since I left has plunged to less than 16k daily and Sunday. It had been as high as 22K, so that's a 30 percent plunge.
The Vacaville paper - sister one in the MNG family - used to have fewer readers, but it has long since passed them.