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Archive for the ‘Ranting and Raving’ Category

Let’s get crazy!!

Posted in Poking the Canucks, Ranting and Raving, tagged , , on May 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Yep...

Yep…

Two weeks from Saturday, I leave my day-to-day job. It’s time.

My fingers, which are essential to doing the one thing I do well — craft words — have taken a beating, first on this job and at a previous one.

Physically and mentally, I need a break.

So, I’m taking my two bucks and change and walking away and I plan to spend the summer being a beach bum on the rocky, mussel-encrusted shores of Penn Cove and writing.

In 21 months of doing Coupeville Sports, on the side and around a “real” job, I have produced 2,045 articles.

That’s 97.3 articles a month, more than three a day.

I cover varsity. I cover JV. I cover middle school. I cover little kids. I even toss in some drama, a little science and a smidge of band, just to keep you guessing.

If you’re a star, I put your name in bold. If you’re a bench warmer, I write a feature about you … with your name in bold and a couple of exclamation points in the headline.

The Canadian-owned papers are the dad in the easy chair, comfortable and half-asleep.

I’m the (sometimes) annoying little kid who has crawled up the back fence and is screaming out all the gossip to anyone with two ears in the neighborhood.

And guess what, Canucks?

I’m going to have a lot more free time on my hands and those hands are firmly grasped around the paddle headed for your over-privileged fanny.

My hope is, if I can make the few bucks I need to cover my minimal bills (frugal is replacing Alan as my middle name), that I go forward 100% with Coupeville Sports from this moment.

No more conflicts, no more other job.

So, readers, what is this worth to you?

Do you want an independent voice on the Island, a guy who has not only lived here for 25 years but actually swims in Penn Cove daily, or are you content to bow to a corporation owned by a kajillionaire up in Moosejaw who, if he thinks of our town, thinks of our town only as a dot on a spread sheet?

Do you want to support a company that took the vending machines out of the Whidbey News-Times’ office (is this Russia?!?!) or support the guy who successfully pulled off Cookie Wars 2014?

Is it worth $5 to you to keep the dream alive? $10? More?

Unlike the Canadian-owned rags, I won’t charge you to read anything on this blog and won’t put pop-up ads on here to annoy the livin’ Hell out of you.

Ever.

If 2,045 articles and 783,087 photos in 21 months is not worth a penny to you, feel free to keep reading for free. You don’t even have to feel bad about it.

But, if you do feel like fueling the rebellion, and choose to click on the donation button on the top right hand side of the main page, your $1 or $5 or whatever you feel OK about parting with, will do one huge thing.

It will make it more likely that, when the fall rolls around, I am doing this 100% of the time.

That I am attending every home game, and not just the ones I can get to around a “real” job.

That my turn-around time for getting stories written and posted (already pretty darn quick) is never compromised because The Man requests my presence at work 10 minutes after a game is done.

That I continue to show Canada how Coupeville should be covered.

So, think about it. I’ll be over here, soaking my fingers in Penn Cove.

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They’re killin’ me, Smalls!!

Posted in Poking the Canucks, Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on April 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The middle finger will join us later...

The middle finger will join us later…

I have one talent, and it is being chipped away.

I write. I write well. I can flat out write most people under the table, out of the room and into traffic, where they will be dodging semi trucks for the next several hours.

If I am confident about anything, it is this — I can beat you in a war of words.

You may get confused halfway through reading what I wrote — how exactly did we end up in traffic in the first place? — but I will carry you someplace special.

Most times. Not every time. Michael Jordan missed a basket or two.

Which is fine, cause Larry Bird never, ever missed a shot when he had to make one. Ever. And I’ve always been more of a Bird man than a Jordan guy.

Call it cockiness. Call it confidence. I have skills.

Of course, I have spent the last 24 years refusing to listen to editors, jousting with those who would tweak my words and basically telling anyone who doubts that it goes from God’s lips to my fingertips to suck eggs.

Which, surprisingly, hasn’t always gone over well.

So, now, instead of making a comfortable living writing pap for The (Canadian) Man, I pound out my prose in a way that makes me happy.

Coupeville Sports has been more, much more, than I anticipated.

It has given me freedom, a chance to continue to fight for independent journalism after The Whidbey Examiner committed ritual suicide and was forever branded as just another punk sell-out.

It has given me a chance to make direct contact with my audience in a way that never existed before.

To build the legend of Cow Town in a way frowned on by the snot-nosed blue bloods who sneer that their papers are superior, while secretly sweating bullets because they’ve lost their readers and they’re not coming back.

But, while I get all hopped up on (probably misguided) moral outrage and fire exclamation points all over the joint (at least two guaranteed in every story!!), the reality is, I still have to do stuff to pay the bills.

And that stuff is killing me, day by day. Or, my fingers, at least.

The fingers that are my one gift are being abused and used, torn apart, ground down, mashed, cut, shredded and beaten to the point where they are a mix of pain, stiffness and soreness filled with an aching buzz.

Being in the dish pit at 18 wasn’t great. Being a few years further down the road now, it’s a lot less enticing to have made a return trip.

I look at my fingers, the things that allow me to tell my stories, and I see a open, puffy slash down one of them, in a place where the water and the steel wool abuses it further with each dish.

I see nicks, bumps and bruises. They stretch across all ten fingers, the cuticles hammered and chipped.

There are mornings when I flex my hands and the middle finger on one hand stays locked down, refusing to pop back up and join its brothers without some real coaxing.

Excedrin is my travelin’ companion in the morning, and the day job is killing me. Physically, and, far more often, mentally and emotionally.

Maybe I should have just shut up and let them mangle my words in the early days, so I wouldn’t be getting my fingers mangled today. Taken the 401K and sold my soul…

Nah.

Better to go into that good night forever flippin’ the middle digits at The Man, even if you sometimes have to smack one of them to get it to stand up at full attention.

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Digital sub? Go stick it up North, boys!!

Posted in Poking the Canucks, Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , on April 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Yes, I will publish a story at 2 AM, so you can be th efirst to read it. And no, I won't charge you ... EVER.

Yes, I will publish a story at 2 AM, so you can be the first to read it. And no, I won’t charge you … EVER. For I fight for truth, justice and a truly free press.

The kajillionaire who owns The Whidbey Examiner would like you to pay for his yacht to be vacuumed.

Seriously.

The Examiner, like the Whidbey News-Times and South Whidbey Record, for all their protests of being local, are owned by Sound Publishing, which is an arm of Black Press Group Ltd., a Canadian-based company that owns more than 200 papers in two countries.

When you spend your money with the “local” papers, a sizable portion goes North, and I’m not talking about Bellingham.

And now the Examiner, which, for many years, was the one true independent paper in this area, the last paper fighting the good fight, is a shell of its former self.

Canada stripped away the Examiner’s history, erasing years worth of stories off the paper’s web site in a day.

I wrote hundreds of stories for the paper when we were “fighting the good fight” under a publisher/editor, who, while we cheesed each other off frequently, was deeply committed to keeping independent journalism alive.

Good luck finding a single one of those stories now that the Tim Horton fanatics own the joint.

The Examiner does not have a stand-alone staff, as its reporters are News-Times employees and much of what is printed in the Examiner is a mirror image of what is printed in the News-Times, albeit with slightly altered headlines.

The Examiner rarely, if ever, breaks news. It frequently fails to cover “local” events the way a “local” paper would, and should, be expected to.

When Coupeville High School had its Homecoming parade and football game this year, not a SINGLE Examiner photo appeared online for a full week.

I ran more than 50 in the first 48 hours.

But starting next week, the Examiner (and the bean counters back in Moosejaw) wants you to pay for their paltry online offerings.

The News-Times and Record will follow shortly thereafter, unless this is merely cover to shut the Examiner down after the subscriptions fail to meet expectations.

As newspapers everywhere flounder, some are desperately grabbing on to digital subscriptions in an effort to find more money.

The Examiner cites a rise in the number of papers that are following this trend as their primary reason for making you pay to read their three-days-late, inch-thin coverage.

Except, they quickly ignore the other info readily available which shows newspapers are having a terrible time actually making any money off of digital subs. Because few people are actually willing to pay.

You can try and charge all you want. If no one is willing to pay, what’s the point, other than alienating the three people still reading your rag?

Times have changed. We live in an age where the internet has taken the power away from the media corporations who once controlled the flow of news.

A generation expects to receive their news for free, quickly. When a paper like the Record outright refuses to post stories to the internet until the print edition hits the streets, resulting in week-long waits, it’s beyond embarrassing.

It’s dereliction of duty.

Those clinging to the past can sneer all they want as they try and claim a high moral ground as “professionals.”

The reality is when major newspapers have crashed and burned and influential writers such as Art Thiel are writing for blogs, the folks running the blogs are often just as experienced, professional and creative, if not more so, than those hanging on in corporate land.

The biggest different is those of us out here on the “outside” are working for the people, while those of you on the “inside” are working for The Man.

Freedom of the press means many things, and one huge part of that is the ability of people to have free, easy access to the news.

I don’t have medical insurance, a 401K, paid vacation or doughnuts in the break room (well, actually I do, but they were gifts from local parents) like the Canuck-financed reporters do.

What I do have is the knowledge that you will never, ever have to pay a subscription to read Coupeville Sports.

Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

It’s not the American way. But, then again, they do a lot of things differently in Canada…

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Well, blind umps don’t help…

Posted in Baseball, Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , on March 31, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Wade Schaef scored Coupeville's only run Monday, plated by a Josh Bayne double. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Wade Schaef scored Coupeville’s only run Monday, plated by a Josh Bayne double. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

“We certainly are capable of beating them.”

That’s how Coupeville High School baseball coach Willie Smith is looking at the situation after game one of a three-game series against the beast of the Cascade Conference, Archbishop Thomas Murphy.

Monday, the Wolves took a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the fifth, but couldn’t quite close the deal. A combination of questionable calls, a bit of nerves by CHS and a couple of clutch plays from ATM propelled the host Wildcats to a 5-1 victory.

The loss dropped Coupeville to 3-2 overall, 2-2 in league play. ATM is 5-2, 5-0.

For four innings, Wolf starting pitcher Ben Etzell was throwing a beautiful game. Up to that point, he had whiffed eight ATM batters while surrendering just a pair of singles.

Then, things fell apart a little.

A flubbed grounder and a double put two men on base, before ATM knotted the game on a bloop single.

Enter the umps (without their seeing eye dogs). Exit reason.

An apparent force out at second was denied, when the ump called the runner safe, leaving the bags juiced.

A bases-loaded walk forced home the go-ahead run, then ATM capitalized on a long foul ball (“by about a foot and a half”) that was waved fair, allowing two more runners to scoot home.

While he wasn’t thrilled with the calls, Smith has been in the game too long to blame the loss on the arguable decisions alone.

“While it would seem those two judgement calls cost us, and they certainly didn’t help, we should have never been up by just one at that point in the game,” he said. “So I don’t believe, or use those calls as an excuse for why we lost.”

Coupeville had runners on second base in each of the first four innings, yet only got one man across home plate. The lack of a big hit at a key moment was a killer.

“So, for me and for our team, we didn’t put the bat on the ball and capitalize on opportunities when we needed to and they did and that was the difference in the game,” Smith said. “For us, it’s about being able to capitalize on opportunities and putting more pressure on them then they can on us.”

The Wolves scored their lone run in the fourth. Wade Schaef garnered a two-out walk and scooted home on a booming double into the right-center gap from Josh Bayne.

Etzell also had a double for CHS, and struck out nine while throwing a complete game.

The two teams pick things up again Wednesday, when ATM comes to Whidbey. First pitch is at 4 PM.

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A quarter-million page views? It’s a start!!

Posted in Poking the Canucks, Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

"Oh lord, Uncle David is rambling about the Canucks again ... Go to your happy place ... I'm the map! I'm the map! I'm the map!! Ah yeah... (Sarah Kirkconnell photo)

“Oh lord, more rambling about Canada. Go to your happy place. I’m the map! I’m the map! I’M THE MAP!! Take me away, Dora.” (Sarah Kirkconnell photo)

Fear me, Huffington Post, fear me!!

OK, well then, now that I’ve calmed down and come back to reality, it’s highly unlikely that a major web site like HuffPo is ever going to worry about Coupeville Sports chipping away at their page view dominance.

Yet…

But, and this seems like a major milestone — at least to me — in the next day or so, I will click over into 250,000 page views in the short run of my blog.

A quarter million views — half a million eyeballs, if each viewer had both eyes working — of what is essentially a niche project.

And a pretty thin niche at that, since the Welcome to Coupeville sign that sits two-tenths of a mile from “company” headquarters states there’s about 1,800 people residing inside city limits.

Now, it’s possible some of those views came my way inadvertently.

A day does not go by that the internet search term “shower boys” doesn’t kick at least one weirdo my way.

The day I gave in to CHS wild man Brian Norris on his birthday and ran his photo of Wolf baseball and soccer players mugging for the camera in the showers (WEARING TOWELS, I MIGHT ADD!!!!!) was the day I found a new, probably unnecessary, audience.

But, however I got there, a quarter million page views blows me away.

I have no idea what numbers the Canadian corporate rags are pulling in these days, but I am pretty sure more people are reading me now than when I plugged away for the Whidbey Examiner (before their Evil Overlords erased three years worth of my bylined stories).

I rarely, if ever, got any kind of feedback from players, parents or fans in those days, while now it’s a steady two-way street.

A huge part of the success of this blog comes not from any words I type, but from the billions of photos we run.

Jim Waller, the Sports Editor at the Whidbey News-Times, and my high school journalism teacher (he may still be having cold sweat-drenched flashbacks to those days) is doing a strong job for the Canadian rags, writing and shooting.

Since the Examiner is a paper in name only, without a staff of its own, his work also runs there.

But it’s a little unfair at times.

Since the Canadian rags are too cheap (my words, not his) to provide him with a full-time photographer like the olden days, he has to face my Million Mom Army by himself.

Waller is one man, and he has to cover Oak Harbor sports as well (it might look unseemly if a Hall of Fame baseball coach who toiled in the purple and gold for three-plus decades ignored his former stomping grounds), so he can’t be everywhere.

Thanks to Shelli Trumbull, John Fisken, Robert Bishop, Kali Barrio, Amy King, Kerry Rosenkrance, Amy Briscoe and a list of snap-happy photo bugs that goes on for days, I can be everywhere.

Without ever leaving my perch on Penn Cove.

So, the people come for the photos, and, if I’m lucky, they read some of the words as well.

Whatever. It seems to be working.

In the end, I have no idea what 250,000 page views really means.

I might be getting my butt kicked by the Canadian rags. Possible.

With all the money they’re funneling into their Whidbey papers, the corporate hosers in Moose Jaw better be hoping their papers are producing better numbers than I am.

If not, the giant, belching media beast should seriously think about funding me on the side.

I took your loony-encrusted paychecks from ’92-’94 (and cashed them without flinching) and you could draft on my success in ’14 for what it probably costs to buy morning doughnuts for head honcho David Black.

My contact info is readily available, Moosejawians.

If I am, by some weird twist, actually getting better numbers than the sports sections of the “local” papers, well then, maybe you shouldn’t have erased my bylines and ticked me off in the first place, you back-bacon-eatin’ hosers.

Yep, there’s one thing 250,000 page views can’t correct — my willingness to burn all my bridges while I’m still standing on them.

Classic David.

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