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Posts Tagged ‘Whidbey Examiner’

End of an era!!

Posted in Everything changes, tagged , , , , on January 5, 2017| Leave a Comment »

The Whidbey Examiner lasted 22 years, 17 with me as a freelancer. This shirt? Not as long. (David Svien photo)

   The Whidbey Examiner lasted 22 years, 18 with me as a freelancer. This shirt? Not as long. (David Svien photo)

I come to praise the Whidbey Examiner, not bury it.

Two weeks from now, after the Jan. 19 edition is published, the paper which came into the world as the Coupeville Examiner, will cease existence, retired at age 22.

As a business decision, it makes perfect sense.

There are no employees to feel sorry for, as the paper has shared the same staff with the Whidbey News-Times for some time.

No one is having to hit the bricks, and, in an era where newspaper staffs are being gutted, that’s a true positive.

But, I have to admit, on an emotional level, the news hit me a little harder than I expected.

I have a long, volatile relationship with the Examiner, having made the journey from fanatical true believer, to wanting to (metaphorically) burn the joint down, to being at peace with where the paper was, and where I was.

I was never a “real” employee of the Examiner, and yet, my byline appeared hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times in the paper.

When it was launched in 1994, by four of my former co-workers from the News-Times (Keven R. Graves, Mary Kay Doody, Gretchen Young and Bill Wilson) and business wizard Laura Blankenship, it was a bold, risky move.

It’s not like today, when any idiot can create a blog like Coupeville Sports for free and be publishing five minutes later.

Back then, it was all about print, and these renegades were going toe-to-toe with the News-Times, which had been around since the late 1800’s and owned its own presses.

For them even to get a paper out, especially with the giant up North openly staring them down, was a monumental achievement.

And, right from the start, it was a quality paper, an award-winning paper.

How could it not be?

These four were some of the best journalists the Island has seen, and they were fighting for their newspaper lives, to be financially successful against staggering odds, while also offering a higher quality product than what was coming out of Oak Harbor in those days.

While I had left behind day-to-day newspaper writing at age 23 earlier that year (the first of many idiotic decisions), Keven and Co. let me jump my movie reviews from the News-Times to the Examiner.

I’m not 100% sure what issue of the new paper I debuted in, though I know it was near the start, and that column ran in the Examiner, without missing a week, until 2010.

Over that time I wrote a lot of other freelance articles, as they always found a way to include me, and a way to put up with me.

Keven, Gretchen, Lauren and Bill departed over the years, because of family, because of other plans, because of needing to pay the bills.

And yet, their memory was always there.

As I continued to write for the Examiner, often putting an emphasis on the free part of freelance in the later years, I made that decision because I believed in what they started.

I wrote for Mary Kay, because she was the hardest-working reporter I ever knew.

And, because, back when I somehow fast-talked my way into being a 21-year-old Sports Editor at the News-Times, despite never having stepped foot on a college campus, she treated me like I belonged in the newsroom.

Even when I was acting like an idiot with no clue, giving the people who signed my checks angina and seeing how many AP style book rules I could bust in a single afternoon.

She was a pro’s pro, even when calling someone up while madly typing, then proceeding to scream “I can’t talk now, I’m on deadline!,” all while bashing the phone on our cubicle wall 22 times as the person on the other end tried to explain SHE had called THEM.

The Examiner could have faded away when Mary Kay’s health took a turn for the worse, but another of my former WNT co-workers, Kasia Pierzga, came in to save the day, buying the paper.

Now, I am not the easiest writer to deal with, whether I am an employee or a freelancer, and that was most evident during the Kasia years.

From God’s lips to my finger tips, and how dare you even think of changing one word I wrote.

I wrote it the way I want it written, and there is little doubt I can be a pain in the rear, especially if you get between those lips and those fingertips.

I have also never missed a newspaper deadline in 27 years, and, while it will undoubtedly sound egotistical, I firmly believe I am a far better writer than 99.9% of the people with a college diploma on their walls.

So, Kasia put up with me, and during her run, I wrote a lot, with an emphasis on returning to sports, and I believed deeply.

The Examiner was the last stand against the Evil Empire, the only independent newspaper voice left on Whidbey.

Kasia and Justin Burnett were doing the hard work, keeping the paper alive with a strong journalistic voice.

Meanwhile, I was allowed to work on the edges, the king of annoying emails in which I got way too upset over how my Paul Newman obit was edited or why my sports scoops weren’t being posted at 3 AM.

But I believed in what The Examiner stood for, and looking back, I see how hard Kasia worked, how much of her life she put into the paper.

My respect for what she accomplished grows with each day.

I didn’t react well when she sold the paper to the same company which owns the News-Times and South Whidbey Record in 2012.

And I certainly did not react well when all my bylines — often my only payment — vanished off of hundreds of my stories on the Examiner’s web site.

Whether they were scrubbed intentionally or lost inadvertently in the change-over no longer matters.

It did, for a very long time.

It’s why I launched Coupeville Sports, and anger drove me in the early days.

I saw myself as the heir to the legacy of the “true” Examiner, the only one who didn’t “sell out” to The Man.

If you haven’t noticed, I can be very self-righteous.

I have mellowed over the past four-plus years, for many reasons. I no longer view it as a battle between me and a giant media conglomerate.

Coupeville Sports has offered me the freedom I always wanted for my writing (I can even post at 3 AM if I feel like it), and Keven’s return to run the Whidbey papers made it hard to view them as the “enemy.”

Also, and this might be the biggest thing, I didn’t like the perception that people thought I was in a war with Jim Waller, who has been dividing his sports coverage between the News-Times and the Examiner.

There are several people who have had a profound impact on my journalistic “career” (Fred Obee, Geoff Newton, Keven, Ellen Slater, Lionel Barona), but if it wasn’t for Waller, you probably wouldn’t have seen a single story from me.

If he didn’t ignore his own rules and let me fast-talk my way onto the Oak Harbor High School newspaper when my parents uprooted us from Tumwater, I end up doing something else.

If he doesn’t choose me over the high school paper’s Sports Editor when the News-Times comes looking for a kid to write one basketball story, I end up doing something else.

Jim Waller is the #1 reason I have spent the last two decades-plus irritating the heck out of editors.

Wait, that doesn’t sound right…

The point is, I’ve grown (a bit) and Coupeville Sports and the Whidbey papers can co-exist nicely. We cross over in some areas, and we each have our sweet spots that the other one doesn’t care to hit.

I know for a stone-cold fact that after 30+ years as a high school coach in multiple sports (PS — He’s in the state Hall of Fame for baseball coaches), there’s no way Waller’s sitting through a JV game, ever again.

So now, the Examiner fades away, with the News-Times once again the sole newspaper voice of the area.

The world has changed since 1994 (if it hadn’t, I’d still be getting paid to happily watch movies at Videoville), and life will go on, in a slightly different manner.

As I personally go forward, though, I’d like to think, that in some way, with Coupeville Sports, I still help carry the torch for the Examiner, just as Keven and Justin do in their work with the News-Times and Record.

Whether we came in on day one, or further down the trail, whether we had ownership or operated on the outskirts, every single person who came together to weave the tapestry of the Examiner should be proud today.

It was a heck of a run.

 

To read the official obit, pop over to:

http://www.whidbeyexaminer.com/news/after-22-years-the-examiner-will-cease-publication/

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Remember the past, build for the future!!

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2016| Leave a Comment »

This photo of Wolf cheerleaders Emily Clay (left) and Katie Kiel, taken after a paint war, was one of the first I ever ran on this blog. (Pam Headridge photo)

   One of the first photos I published featured Wolf cheerleaders Emily Clay (left) and Katie Kiel in the aftermath of a team paint war. (Pam Headridge photo)

gbb

   The most popular pic in blog history — Wolf hoops players celebrating the win which sent them to state last season. (John Fisken photo)

Coupeville Sports started in anger.

And, while a bit of that still lingers — though it’s more mild frustration than outright anger these days — I’d like to think things have largely changed for the better.

When I launched this blog Aug. 15, 2012, I really didn’t know I’d churn out 4,497 articles in the next four years.

That my readership numbers would vastly top what I anticipated and continue to grow each year.

Most of all, I didn’t realize it would offer me a chance to make a real, hopefully lasting, impact on a community in which I’ve lived for the past two decades-plus.

Back then, I was just peeved. Seriously peeved.

The Whidbey Examiner, a proudly independent paper I had written for on a consistent basis for 15+ years, had been sold to the same Canadian kajillionaire who already owned all the other publications on the Island.

One moment, we were “fighting the good fight against the Evil Empire,” and the next we were just another minor line item on a business report produced by that same “Evil Empire.”

Which might have been OK, if all my bylines (way too often the only “payment” I received) hadn’t promptly vanished, never to be seen again, erased by a giant corporation that couldn’t have given less of a crap if it tried.

So, I was mad.

When I kick-started my blog, I set out to be a major pain in the ass to the Whidbey papers.

If you look back at some of the early days, when I frequently ridiculed Canada and picked fights with South Whidbey, King’s and ATM fans, I was a bit of a turd.

A partially-justified turd, but still a turd.

Aggrieved South Whidbey fans even launched their own rival sports blog, which sputtered and died after a mere two articles.

But then things changed, not 100% (losing hundreds of by-lined stories forever still chafes me), but a good, let’s say, 83.2%.

Little bits and pieces of change came from a lot of people, though Kim Andrews probably deserves the most credit.

She was the sports scheduling magician at CHS in the early days of Coupeville Sports, and more than once she gave me good-natured grief about some of my choices.

“You can do better. You could make a real impact if you’d stop being such a butt-head all the time,” she’d say, and I’d roll my eyes.

But, over time, I began to realize how right she was, and I began to (slowly) change.

Four years later, I still tweak South Whidbey from time to time (King’s and ATM moved out of my line of fire when Coupeville changed leagues) and I’m still not totally copacetic with Canada.

But Coupeville Sports, by and large, has gone in a much more positive direction, and both my readership numbers, and what I personally get out of running the blog, have benefited.

When I look back on nearly 4,500 articles, there are some that really worked, a few that probably didn’t, and a lot in the middle.

Hearing a story made an impact on someone, getting positive feedback, in person or through the internet, has driven me more than money (though every last donation is immensely appreciated).

As we take that first step into year five, there are two areas, both still works in progress, of which I am most proud.

When I started my own Hall of Fame, which lives at the top of the blog under the Legends tab, it was a way to give myself something to write about on Sundays.

Now, 60 induction ceremonies later, it’s become something much larger, in spirit at least.

It’s a way to remember the people who have come along and left a mark, who have made Wolf Nation bigger, brighter and better, whether as athletes, coaches or contributors.

To tell them, at least for a moment, “We remember what you did. We will not forget you.”

And now, any day, a more concrete version of that sentiment will rise on the CHS gym wall.

It’s taken a good year, of research (which gave me an opportunity to forge an alliance with the Whidbey papers, thanks to the generosity of Keven R. Graves and Jim Waller), of fundraising, of fast-talking and cajoling, of believing deeply, but my title board project is almost reality.

When it goes up, the handful of banners in the gym will be replaced by a display which recognizes 112 titles won over the past 56 years in 11 different sports at our high school.

For the first time, athletes, fans and coaches will see the highly-successful Wolf teams of the ’70s remembered along side the new golden age Coupeville’s female athletic stars crafted in the early 2000’s.

A sport like cross country, no longer active at CHS but bearing a proud past, will step back into the spotlight again.

Tennis, which has never gotten its fair share of the credit, will rise up and finally be acknowledged, with track, as the most successful athletic programs in school history.

Those who came before will know “We remember what you did. We will not forget you,” and those participating today will have something to aim for, a chance to join their parents and grandparents on Coupeville’s Wall of Fame.

It’s a huge moment, for the school, for the community, as we embrace a vital part of our history, and it will mean a lot to me, to know that one idiot with a blog was able to help pull it all off.

As I head into year five of Coupeville Sports, it would be easy to slip back into poking the Falcons with cheap-shots or lament what Canada took from me.

But I’d rather look forward and try to build on what the Hall of Fame and the title board project have helped accomplished.

Somewhere, Kim Andrews is smiling.

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So, this is life…

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on September 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

"Man, Uncle David, you do jabber on, don't you?"

“Man, Uncle David, you do jabber on, don’t you?”

I’m having a bit of an existential crisis over here.

It’s been sparked by a lot of things, probably, as I wound my way through one of the more bizarre summers of my life.

In no particular order I:

Quit my day job of three-plus years in an effort to save my typing fingers from the ravages of more battles with the dish pit.

Then drifted along, swimming with the jellyfish in Penn Cove and not accomplishing much at all, certainly not finding a new job.

Sold every single one of my 2,700 DVDs, even greatest-movie-of-all-time “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the unfairly maligned “Bad Girls from Valley High.”

The landlord does appreciate getting his rent in a timely fashion.

Found myself in an unexpected romantic relationship that went from zero to 199 MPH before I was (metaphorically) slammed into a brick wall by my first up-close encounter with truly unfathomable mental illness.

Breakups happen. People get mad or change.

But when fear and paranoia that haunt a beautiful, intelligent, joyful person rips free and strips all that away in a blink of an eye, it scars. Badly.

Got to experience the inside of our judicial system as it was being abused for the first time.

Gave consideration to going back into the world of professional/corporate newspapers again in some manner, while actually returning to the pages of The Whidbey Examiner, for one story at least, after an absence of four years.

That last one might have been the oddest of all those moments.

It’s a good story, one that deserved to be told, but, as I posted a link to it on Facebook today and didn’t see the usual Coupeville Sports kicker, I knew, immediately, this would not work. Not at this point in my life.

After all the time and sweat poured into my own project, doing side work, even for money, left me with an eerie empty feeling I couldn’t shake.

There was a 15-year-plus streak where my writing appeared every week in the Examiner, without fail.

My movie column jumped from the Whidbey News-Times to the Examiner (when they were actual rivals and not sister publications owned by a giant conglomerate) when the upstart was on issue #2 or #3, and kept on rolling, week after week, for a surprisingly long time.

Later, I wrote a lot of sports articles (and even got paid for a few) and there was a time when, arguably, my byline had appeared in those pages, and later, online, as much or more than any other writer in the paper’s history.

And then, long story compressed into a single run-on sentence, the Examiner got sold, thousands of my bylines got erased, I got pissed, launched Coupeville Sports and went to war with the “Evil Empire,” only to find, to my surprise, the joy I got from my new endeavor mattered more than any trumped-up feud.

Being able to be my own editor, to publish whatever I choose, whenever I choose, however I choose, without concern over being impartial and detached (cause I’m not) has been liberating. It has been invigorating.

What it hasn’t been is all that profitable.

But that’s fine.

If I was writing for the money, a regular paycheck, I would go back to “real” journalism, in whatever capacity was available to me.

Which I considered.

And believe me, none of this is meant as a knock on the people currently working for the papers here on Whidbey. They’re in the job for more than money.

I know most of them very well, they are people who helped me along the way and influenced my writing, and I have great respect for long-time pros like Keven Graves, Jim Waller and Jessie Stensland.

I just can’t do what they’re doing, even if I thought, for a brief second, I might be able to do so again.

It’s mainly I just don’t want to have to go put pants on again. My shorts-clad legs crave the open air of Whidbey winters in all its ferocious glory.

And yes, you can remind me I said that two months from now when I turn blue in the time it takes to go from my car to the gym.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to one thing. I believe in Coupeville Sports.

I believe in the improbable dream that at some point, I will give every single athlete in Cow Town their very own feature story.

We’re not quite there yet, but over the course of 3,441 articles and a gazillion photos, we have created something that couldn’t happen, that wouldn’t happen, at the newspapers.

It’s why I sold my DVDs, to give myself some time where my only focus was on the blog while still being able to pay my very limited bills.

That time is about to run out, so I may need to get past my summer-long mental block and get a “real” job again, though I hope not.

In a perfect world, every one who tells me how much they enjoy what I am doing here on Coupeville Sports would want this to be my “real” job, would skip one day’s Starbucks and donate $5 to the cause.

But, as this summer has repeatedly hammered home, perfection is awfully hard to capture.

Not that I’m going to stop trying, one existential crisis at a time.

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Time to burn the past?!?!

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , , , on July 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Which of these is not the same as the others?

Which of these is not the same as the others?

I have a battered, cruddy t-shirt, worn down by time and the tears of those who toiled for The Whidbey Examiner while she was still still an independent newspaper.

The hole across the collar is getting larger, and, since the shirt itself is getting thinner after several years of wear and washing, it’s about to go from a slight annoyance to full-on disgrace.

I should probably throw it away, or burn it.

And yet, I have held on to it, since it was the last connection to a time before the Canucks swept down from Moosejaw and bought up The Examiner, putting a monopoly on Whidbey’s three papers.

Having written a lot of stories for the rag — my weekly video column alone ran, without missing a week, for 15 years — I wasn’t thrilled to see it sold off to Black Press, becoming just another small line item in a vast global media empire’s business report.

But, we’re not here to rehash that.

Instead, I’m here to show off the unexpected gift that showed up in my mailbox yesterday.

Having seen a photo of my much-battered Examiner t-shirt, Eric at Ashley’s Design (http://www.ashleysdesign.com/) in Oak Harbor decided, on a whim, to print up some shirts for Coupeville Sports, using a similar design.

It was a nice, unexpected surprise.

As this blog careens, slightly out-of-control, towards its two-year anniversary on Aug. 16, maybe it’s time to put on a new t-shirt and fully discard the past.

Who wants to make smores cooked over the embers of a beat-up Examiner t-shirt?

Anyone … anyone … Bueller … Bueller?

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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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