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Posts Tagged ‘Whidbey News-Times’

I’m (officially) a bum!!

Posted in Ranting and Raving, tagged , , on July 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

let it go

My anger for how The Examiner went out? I need to let it go. Probably should let this shirt go too. It’s getting a little drafty.

"Cookies! Bring me all the cookies now ... for I am Maddie Big Time and I have earned them!!" (John Fisken photo)

  “Cookies! Bring me all the cookies now … for I am Maddie Big Time and I have earned them!!” (John Fisken photo)

This is my only job. At least for now.

Having walked out Sunday (literally) on my restaurant gig, after being there close to two years, I am free to put my full 100% into Coupeville Sports for the first time in the 22.5 months it has been in existence.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be down at Penn Cove, being a beach bum.

A Washington state-bred, rocky beach-usin’, is-it-even-55-degrees-out-here-complainin’, cold water-splashin’ beach bum…

A beach bum who hopes that, if folks like what they’re getting here, they might consider chipping in a buck or three to the cause. How convenient that I have a donation button at the top of the blog.

Handy.

While down at the beach — the barnacle-encrusted, jagged-rock-strewn beach — I will ponder the twists and turns Coupeville Sports has taken.

This blog started in anger.

I was mad at the Whidbey Examiner for selling out to a giant Canadian media conglomerate that already owned the Whidbey News-Times and South Whidbey Record.

I was mad Canada erased hundreds of my bylined stories off of what was now their web site.

I may have referred to the former owner of the Examiner as a carpetbagger. Actually, I’m sure I did.

Not the first time I ticked her off. By a long shot.

Perhaps, maybe, if we all believe hard enough, I will show some personal growth and it’ll be the final time I do so. That would be nice.

But as Coupeville Sports took off, hitting heights I didn’t think possible, as I have pulled in far bigger readership numbers than expected, as I delivered onto you 2,206 articles (they weren’t all gems, but dang, that’s 3.5 articles a day for almost two years, doing it PART TIME), most of the anger abated.

I have still continued to poke the eeeeeeeviiiiiillllll Canuck media empire that owns the three “local” papers, but I am trying (seriously) to tone that down a bit.

They’re not going to give me back my articles, and, at this point, I don’t much care.

Coupeville Sports has given me what I wanted most as a journalist (or whatever you want to call me — writer, blogger, spleen-venter, “that idiot who won’t shut up”) — freedom.

I don’t answer to an editor. No one touches my words except me. I publish what I want, when I want and how I want.

2:17 AM — the time when all the best articles get published. It’s true.

It has been liberating and, after 24 years of on-again, off-again sports coverage on Whidbey Island, there is a joy in my work again that was missing for a big chunk of that time.

What we have here in Coupeville Sports is something the papers can’t offer, because it’s not how they work. And I don’t mean that as a slam on them.

The newspapers are the responsible adult in the room.

I don’t have to be responsible, or act like an adult. I can be Dennis the Menace peeking over the fence and screaming, “Hey, guess what I heard?!?!?!?”

Newspapers report. They are part of the community, but there is always a level of removal from the people they cover. It’s how they operate.

Coupeville Sports is YOU, the people.

I may be largely writing it, but it exists because of the countless people who give me photos for free, who slip me info and gossip, who point me in new directions, who read my work, who tell me what they like or loudly yell at me about what they hated.

We can create larger-than-life myths, turning Madeline Strasburg into Maddie Big Time and convincing her to flex her guns for the camera guy after crackin’ a home run, than payin’ her off in cookies from the dozens donated to me by softball moms.

The News-Times won’t do that, can’t do that, and I don’t expect them to. It’s not how professional newspapers work.

Which is why I’m glad I don’t work for a professional paper, as I have done several times in my checkered employment past.

I’m having more fun this way. And now, I’m going to do it full-time.

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Burn, baby, burn!!

Posted in Not sports? Tough!, tagged , , , on May 31, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Fire vs. house. Fire wins. (John Fisken photos)

Fire vs. house. Fire wins. (John Fisken photos)

It's gettin' toasty in here.

It’s gettin’ toasty in here.

Firefighters develop their hose skills.

Firefighters develop their hose skills.

"Who brought the marshmallows?!?!"

“Who brought the marshmallows?!?!”

History burned Saturday.

The house on Barrington Drive in Oak Harbor that once belonged to Whidbey historian and newspaper legend Dorothy Neil was brought down in a controlled fire, so area firefighters could train.

Live on the scene to document the final moments of the 1907 house, which for years sat next door to the offices of The Whidbey News-Times (including a few years when I toiled in those offices) was travelin’ photo man John Fisken.

The pics above are courtesy him, and, oh Canada, we beat you again.

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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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This is where we die, right?!?!?

Posted in Geoff Newton is a God, Ranting and Raving, Whidbey's Best, tagged , , on November 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The man, the myth, the legend … Geoff Newton.

A day that will live in infamy.

Holding on to the roof of the hatchback with my fingers turning white, a notebook clamped between my teeth to keep from swallowing my tongue, I looked fear in the eye and laughed that day.

Or screamed like a little girl with a turbo-wedgie.

Probably the latter.

Geoff Newton, the mad man at the wheel, was driving with one knee, loading his camera with one hand and twirling the dials on his police radio with the other, all while screaming “You’ll never catch me, bastards!!” at the fire trucks which futilely tried to keep up with us as we zigged and zagged down rutted back country roads.

He, an award-winning photographer, was hell-bent to beat everyone to what the radio was describing as a fire of epic proportions.

I, not even an official reporter for the Whidbey News-Times at this point, was hell-bent to keep from remembering my lunch in vivid detail, as I felt it storming up the back of my throat each time the car found the ground long enough to skid.

Mere moments before, we were on a leisurely afternoon drive to interview the new boys’ basketball coach at Oak Harbor High School.

Now we were reenacting “Smokey and the Bandit” … in a car built to go 30.

Holding the line on two wheels, we whipped around a twist in the road, narrowly missing a row of trees and found ourselves at the gates of Hell.

Then Hell went up in a blaze of gunfire.

No mere marshmallow roast, this was a raging inferno, with a house being ripped apart.

Toxic paint and ammo had been stored where the fire started, and they were gettin’ it on at the moment.

Huge clouds of eerily-colored smoke poured out of windows, generally followed by firefighters pouring out of said window.

All around us, gunshots cracked, ping, ping, ping, then a boom lifted part of the roof, which then came crashing back down. Audible profanity could be heard coming from multiple directions.

Geoff, a towering presence in the newsroom and my newspaper idol, strode into Hell with a skip in his step. Crouching in the bushes next to the inferno, he clicked away like a madman, daring the toxic smoke to try and invade his lungs.

The smoke declined the challenge.

Then the owner of the house arrived home and went running past me, screaming about his cat being inside.

The first firefighter missed tackling him, he dodged the second one, but then his foot caught on a loose board and he went face-down like he had been shot, his melon making a squishy sound as he connected with the ground.

Right behind me, up a tree — way up a tree — Sir Wellington, his cat, not being as stupid as the humans, sat passively watching the joint burn down. From his expression, any arson investigation should have started, and ended, with the sassy tabby.

Somewhere a lonely basketball coach sat in an empty gym, wondering why nobody loved him.

In a time before cell phones were giving everyone cancer, I was in a field in the middle of nowhere, flinching in unison at each new blast, along with the veteran fire captain who had set up shop next to me.

“I didn’t flinch! You better not write that, boy! I’m just really itchy today … the wife put too much detergent in my shirts again.”

Then, his foot would take off like a mad man, thumping in place. Apparently the detergent had gotten into his pants, as well.

Hours later, back at the newspaper, I found myself with the first front page story of what has turned into a scatter-shot, on-and-off 23-year newspaper career.

As I pounded away at the computer keys, our editor, Fred Obee, a dead-ringer for Wallace “Inconceivable!” Shawn in “The Princess Bride,” strode by the desk I was using, a lit cigarette already working in his mouth.

Surveying the 45 empty Coke cans scattered around my still-twitchy body, my face smudged with smoke, he laughed.

“First rule of newspaper club, boy. Always pack a clean pair of undies if you’re riding with Newton.”

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