It’s a shame. It really, truly is.
Back in the final days of 2020, my journalism mentor, Jim Waller, retired after his second, and final stint, as Sports Editor for the Whidbey News-Times.
Since he was actually pulling double duty and also crafting stories for their sister paper, The South Whidbey Record, his departure to North Carolina essentially ended sports coverage in Whidbey’s newspapers.
Now, his departure is not the shame.
And neither is the work of the current staff at those newspapers, with Jesse Stensland, Emily Gilbert, Karina Andrew, and Kira Erickson doing fine work.
The shame lies with the bean counters, whether they are at Sound Publishing or, ultimately, at Black Press in Canada.
We are 10 months past Waller’s retirement, and well into a very-active fall school sports season, and Whidbey’s newspapers have not hired a new Sports Editor, or a sports writer, or anything remotely close.
From Jan. 1, 2021 to today, I have published 713 largely Coupeville-centric stories, most of them sports-related, on this blog.
By contrast, the News-Times and Record, the “papers of record” for Whidbey, have largely pretended sports no longer exist.
In Coupeville. In Oak Harbor. In Langley. From Deception Pass Bridge to the Clinton ferry, poof, athletics be gone.
Now, for someone like myself, who worked for the Canadian-funded Whidbey papers back in the ’90s, seeing an ultra-thin eight-page paper (with $1.00 stamped on it) arrive in my landlord’s mailbox is shame enough.
To leaf through it and see nothing sports-related, other than a random photo or brief, rewritten press release, is a stake through the heart.
Go online and it’s no different.
And I get that the newspaper industry has radically changed since the ’90s. I understand, better than many, how much of a struggle it is now.
I also understand my own Don Quixote thing, tilting at windmills and publishing 8,720 small-town sports stories in a little over nine years, can’t and won’t be replicated by anyone who’s not willing to live fast and (really) stupid.
But for the Whidbey newspapers, publications which have endured for 100+ years, papers which have employed really good sports writers in the past, to give up, is beyond shameful.
Both the South Whidbey High School volleyball and girls soccer teams are enjoying outstanding seasons, and seem capable of making serious playoff runs.
Years from now, when the players on those teams look back, they aren’t going to have many published stories, in print or online, to marinate in.
How are Oak Harbor teams doing?
No clue, as I’m buried, writing 4-5 Coupeville-related stories per day, every day, and, unlike the past, the News-Times isn’t there to let me catch a quick update.
There have been times in recent months where people from the two schools I don’t cover have asked me if I would write stories for Oak Harbor and South Whidbey.
I feel their pain. I do.
But I can’t rescue the newspaper bean counters for not doing their job.
I’m too busy with Coupeville, the town which I have committed myself to, and the athletes, parents, coaches, and administrators here, who have supported this blog since 2012.
The current staff at the News-Times/Record is doing what it can to stay on top of Whidbey news. They seem to care a great deal.
But they need help.
The bean counters back at corporate, if they intend to keep these newspapers running, need to realize how important sports coverage is as a part of small-town journalism.
The cost of hiring another reporter, one to cover Oak Harbor and South Whidbey sports (and give me someone to shoot it out with in Coupeville), will not wreck your ledger.
What it will do is give additional advertisers in the North and South a reason to support your papers again.
What it will do is give teens a reason to ever look at your publications, and grandmas a reason to clip stories or print out your work from the internet.
What it will do is restore a proud tradition of Whidbey sports writing which has included the work of Wallie Funk, Jim Waller, Brian Zylstra, Jill Johnson, and a whole lot of others.
What it will do is get me, a guy you paid to write about sports from 1989-1994, off your back, at least for a bit.
Though, I have a long history of chafing Sound Publishing and Black Press, so emphasis on the word “bit…”
Whether you’re a bean counter or David Black, the mythical gazillionaire media mogul behind the curtain in Moose Jaw, as long as you’re running them, you damn well should respect the history of Whidbey’s newspapers.
Sports matter, greatly, when it comes to small-town journalism.
Stop shaming yourself, and act like you have a clue.
If nothing else, give me a competitor again. I dare you.
