Sports Reporter, Rocky Mount (N.C.) Telegram

Anyone with any questions that they think are too "dumb" for Ben, or just want someone other than him, feel free to pm me.

 

I have a question that's too "dumb" for Ben.

Can you offer the new writer an extra cell phone allowance for all the minutes he'll spend talking to Charles Alston?

 

What happened to Jason Boyd?

 

Boyd left a couple months ago to be a designer in Columbus, Ga.

By the way, some recent college grad or someone along those lines is going to be very happy with this Rocky Mount gig. I spent two and a half years there and wouldn't trade it for anything...

 

how 'bout five-ice-cold ones and a brat?

 

In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz:
Ha! — Ha!

Classic

 

Seems like there have been several postings coming out of here in last year. Are people advancing careers with their exits or are they leaving to get out? Know very little about paper so I'm not trying to say it is a bad paper.

 

Sounds like a 50/50 split? Gluck's in a 100K-ish paper in Cali and Boyd, as mentioned, is in Columbus, Ga. Plus they've had other people move up whose names escape me. Of course there's probably the usual flame-outs and career switchers that you'd expect at a paper that size.

 

TELEGRAM, ROCKY MOUNT (EDGECOMBE & NASH COS.) M (M-SAT) DLY 14,736

TELEGRAM, ROCKY MOUNT (EDGECOMBE & NASH COS.) SUN DLY 16,697

 

Clay has only been there a couple months I think. Boyd left because he was looking to find a good job where he wouldn't have to be the boss so much anymore.

But before this, we had a string of four writers in a row who moved up to bigger papers (much bigger, in some cases).

Mike Graff was there for about a year and got hired to cover colleges for Fayetteville.

I was there for 2.5 years and got hired to cover preps and motorsports for a couple papers in Southern California

Travis Sawchik was there for two years and got hired to do preps in Myrtle Beach

Andrew Carter was there for about eight months and got hired to do preps and features for Orlando

Among other recent alumni (within five years), Ted Newman left to be a copy editor in Macon, Ga. and is now in Wilmington, NC. Jack Daly left to write sports in Wyoming and I believe is now in Durham. Patrick Brannan left to be an Orioles beat writer in Carroll County, Md., among other things, and now heads up the news desk there.

I think we have a proud group of alumni, also...we all want to see the paper do well and keep up the "legacy."

 

We have seen a complete transformation, with regard to staff, over the past year. I can't speak on everyone's behalf, but most have left for gigs at larger papers.

The person who is leaving now is the same reporter hired two months ago. He has decided to leave for a different industry alltogether after determining that, at this point in his life, daily papers aren't for him.

I doubt you'll find anyone, who has been here recently, who left bitter for any reason.

 

Actually, you can even take that one step further. My last day at the Telegram (in September) was Hugh Kellenberger's first day. Aside from that one day, I haven't worked with any of the current sports staff...and it's been what, about nine months?

That's how it goes sometimes at papers like that. I think 10 months after I started to the Telegram, I was the senior member of the sports staff. But it's not always that way.