It's official: No more sports at Washington Times

John Taylor let me do a Redskins sidebar at Tampa Bay.

The next day, Sean Taylor was shot. I told him I could be in Miami in four hours if he needed another person on scene. John said get down there.

En route, we learned Sean died. Not since Dale Earnhardt at Daytona had I to file on anything like that before. John assigned me a color piece about the sights and sounds and I spent an entire day riding around Miami putting the story together.

With John's help, it was one of the best stories I ever did. He's also let me do a couple of Wizards games as well.

Thank you, John and best of fortunes to the Times staff.

 

How does this compare to other recently closed papers like the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer?

 

ROH really blasted TWT on the LaVar Arrington Show yesterday too.

Man, I feel so bad for all those guys. Just an awful situation.

 

Very sad day. Like any sports department, the Times had its strengths and weaknesses, its lovable quirks and irritating flaws (occasional office flea infestation = flaw). But at least in the half-decade that I worked there -- and from continued reading, beyond that -- it had the most important quality a sports section can possess.

Fearlessness.

Times Sports took chances -- standing up to the Redskins' owner-induced PR ridiculousness, calling out Washington Sports and Entertainment's bogus attendance numbers, making sports the front page calling card of the Sunday edition, treating sports business like a serious beat, staffing national stories despite not having anything approaching dedicated national writers, experimenting with the sort of graphical stuff and edgy, satirical, offbeat content that is now commonplace in the world of web sports. The sports department was an enormous underdog in its own market -- never mind circulation numbers and backscratching APSE esteem; I'm talking about a sheer lack of resources, from money to staffing to equipment to web presence -- and yet made that underdog status work in its favor, embracing an irregular, get-it-done ethos that suffused its product -- a product that was very competitive with arguably the top sports section in the country.

I'm obviously biased -- I owe the place beyond words for the opportunity I was given -- but I think the old newspaper saw fits: it was a daily miracle.

Anyway, I guess that's my requiem for Times Sports. I wish everyone there well. And I hope they all take that same fearlessness with them, wherever they end up.

 

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/12/30/washington-times-layoffs-how-they-went-down/

 

Until this whole deal with the church went down, there was ZERO inkling that more layoffs were coming. In fact, the new editor John Solomon had been hiring people away from the Post and other outlets in recent months.

This was nothing that anyone in the newsroom could have seen coming.

 

Wow.
I think that's what threw me off because of the recent hires.

 

Don't worry, it threw us off too.

 

To steal a line from one of my deskmates, they didn’t teach How To Deal With Layoffs 101 when I was in college. I guess that’s the one major flaw of the Mizzou journalism program.

I thought it’d be fitting to give a rundown of everyone affected by the sports section’s demise – it’s daunting when you read through it. (A few of these guys are part-timers, but not many):

Mark Hartsell, sports editor
John Taylor, assistant sports editor/assignment editor
Harrison Goodman, assistant sports editor/design
Scott Silverstein, assistant sports editor/copy desk

Columnists
Dan Daly
Dick Heller
Tom Knott
Thom Loverro
Gene Mueller, outdoors
Steve Nearman, running

Reporters
Bob Cohn, enterprise
Barker Davis, Georgetown, colleges, golf
David Elfin, Redskins
Mike Fratto, Navy, Mystics, GA
Ben Goessling, Nationals
Mike Jones, Wizards
Tim Lemke, sports biz
Corey Masisak, Capitals
Ryan O’Halloran, Redskins
Patrick Stevens, Maryland/colleges
Mark Zuckerman, Nationals

Copy desk
Jon Fogg
David Gill
Drew Hansen
Teshia Morris
Michael Petre
Steve Repsher
Stephen Whyno

Many of the people on this list have been in journalism for 10, 15, 20 years. A few, like myself, are relative newcomers. I can honestly say there were times when I took this job for granted – slamming out story after story on Redskins Sundays, battling our sometimes ridiculous deadline schedule, fighting the never-ending cycle of breaking news in this four-sport town – but now, as I get ready to contribute to the last TWT Sports section, I know I’m going to miss it.

Thanks to everyone on that list. And thanks for SportsJournalists.com’s well wishes. It means a lot to all of us.

 

Hope the new year turns out better for everybody.