Good morning,
As the name suggests, this is David Sell, sports editor at the Colorado Springs Gazette.
I wanted to clarify and elaborate on Editude's post of a few hours ago.
The reductions in our newsroom did include sports.
Two part-time copy editing positions were eliminated. One of our full-time copy editors is moving home to Ohio to be closer to friends and family and because she would rather not work nights and weekends. I try very hard to solve problems, but I can't move Ohio here and we need copy editors at night and on weekends. However, she will be replaced by a woman from our news desk. The newcomer started as a part-time sports copy editor before moving into a full-time news desk role. (We try to help the people grow, gain full-time employment wherever it may be and add good journalists throughout the newsroom.)
On the reporting side, Meri-Jo Borzilleri will not return from a leave of absence. Meri-Jo is a cool person and did wonderful work for The Gazette. The other day she won the latest in her string of APSE writing awards for a piece that explained what happens to all those jerseys presented to presidents by championship teams when they visit the White House. If Meri-Jo had wanted to return to The Gazette, there would have been a spot for her. But her book project requires some more time and good things in her personal life meant she was going to depart anyway. By making the choice to leave now, she saved somebody else's job.
Brian Gomez was doing well covering non-Broncos events and issues in Denver. (We have a full-timer on Broncos.) Brian will return to Colorado Springs and succeed Meri-Jo as our Olympics reporter. With the USOC and Olympic Training Center here, we do more Olympic-oriented things than most papers of any size. After that shift, we do lose the Denver GA position, so we'll have to cover the other Denver issues as best we can. Columnist Milo Bryant and David Ramsey, both of whom have won APSE awards, will still offer opinions on those topics.
We try very hard and aim very high. None of that will change, regardless of staff size. Folks have left here for jobs at bigger papers. I spent time at a big, famous newspaper, so I understand the lure. When other sports editors call to ask about our top performers, I'm more than happy to tell them that So-and-So was great, and then I try to talk So-and-So into staying. Sometimes it works. If not, we buy her/him lunch and wish her/him luck.
I'm sure that scenario will be repeated with the talented folks still on our staff. So if you, too, aim high and like to work hard while living in a fabulously beautiful place, send me your resume, clips, headlines, designed pages, blogs, etc. As we're reminded every day, the journalism world changes quickly.
