Now you know...

When Paul Harvey was on ABC Radio he did several shows each day, but the one most people remember is “The Rest of the Story.”

Mr. Harvey would spend about two minutes spinning a yarn, and you could try to figure out where he was going before he actually got to the end. When you beat him to the punch it was actually a bit exciting, since it was often like completing a puzzle.

I bring up Paul Harvey because I am sure some of my friends are wondering how the heck I got a story in Monday’s issue of the Charleston Daily Mail, seeing that I live about 2,500 miles from West Virginia. 

(As an aside, when I lived in Winchester I was about 25 miles from Martinsburg, W.Va., but it seemed like it was 2,500 miles across the state to get to Charleston. The route to Cincinnati went like this: Virginia-West Virginia-Maryland-West Virginia-Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Ohio. If you told me I had to go back into West Virginia to get to Indiana, I’d probably believe you.)

About three weeks ago, Christina and I were looking for a baseball game to attend, and two of our favorite teams (Fullerton and UCLA) were both out of town. Also, it had rained most of the weekend, throwing the schedule for the teams that were hosting games (LMU, USC and Cal State Northridge) into disarray. When everything shook out, Northridge was hosting a doubleheader against Washington State, starting at 10 a.m. Sunday, and since we had never been to a game there, it seemed like the place to go.

While the school requires a $6 daily parking permit, even on weekends, it was nice that tickets are just $5. We also picked up a couple of programs and a schedule, and almost immediately I noticed that West Virginia was making a trip to Northridge in mid-March.

Max Nogay sports WVU's digital camo.

Thanks to my smartphone, I was able to check with Daily Mail Sports Editor Chuck McGill on Facebook while still at the site. Chuck and I worked together at the Northern Virginia Daily for a few years, and have been able to stay in touch over the years and miles.

Chuck said it was quite possible he’d want a story while the Mountaineers were in Northridge, which is about 45 minutes to an hour up the 405 from Torrance. By the time they got here, we worked it out that I would file a story and some photos on March 15, after the final game of their spring break trip.

 The game turned into a wild 14-11 WVU victory, which featured 38 hits between the teams, allowing the Mountaineers to complete their West Coast swing with a 5-2 record, and raise their overall mark to 10-6. Now competing against teams from Texas and Oklahoma in the Big 12, it was important for WVU to get on the diamond while its home ballpark is still under snow, coach Randy Mazey told me.

West Virginia is building its baseball program as it prepares to move into a new stadium in Morgantown next year, one it will share with a New York-Penn League team, similar to the arrangement that Penn State and the State College Spikes have. From what I saw Saturday, the Mountaineers have put together a solid team, so it will be fun to keep an eye on them the rest of the season.

And I will be sure to keep an eye on the schedules when East Coast teams come west. If you need a story or art, give me a shout.

P.S. Here's a link to the story: http://www.charlestondailymail.com/Sports/WVUSports/201403160134

I've Been (Nearly) Everywhere

Often when I am on a sports assignment for the Orange County Register the Johnny Cash song "I've Been Everywhere" runs through my head.

Sure, I had been out to Los Angeles to see my Dad on seven or eight trips since 1978, but the first chance to quantify some of the travel I have made around the Southland comes from the datelines of the football, basketball, baseball and softball games I have covered in the past 12 months.

Most of the games have been in Orange County, of course. I now know several ways to get around the nightly closings of the 405 near the 22 on the widening project that will probably be done sometime around 2022.

I'm pretty sure this list is comprehensive as of right now:

ANAHEIM
HUNTINGTON BEACH
WESTMINSTER
GARDEN GROVE
PLACENTIA
COSTA MESA
NEWPORT BEACH
IRVINE
LAKE FOREST
SANTA ANA
LONG BEACH
LOS ANGELES
TORRANCE
COMPTON
CARSON
ROLLING HILLS ESTATES
GLENDALE
PASADENA
CULVER CITY
EL SEGUNDO
MANHATTAN BEACH

Whew. Quite a list. I won't lie. I was a little concerned about going to Compton, but folks over there were great. And my Los Angeles entry came from a new high school in the south-central area, but, same thing. A great experience.

The non-league season has allowed me to stay closer to home, and save money on gasoline, but eventually I'll be on the road to Orange County again. We'll see how much that adds to the list real soon.

Joe Williams' big write-in win

At one time in my journalism career, I was responsible for coverage of 11 towns in Rockingham and Shenandoah counties in northwestern Virginia. At the time, I was a staff writer and Sunday night wire editor at the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg.

For the most part, it wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. I went to as many town council meetings as I could, not only to get live coverage, but also to generate follows and trend stories. Between that and covering Shenandoah County it was not difficult to generate the eight to 10 stories a week they wanted from me, in fact, I sometimes provided more.

But coming into the town council elections in May 1998, I had my hands full. Thankfully, another reporter was assigned to compile the Rockingham County towns’ results, so I was able to concentrate on New Market, Mount Jackson, Edinburg and Woodstock. Still, there was a big surprise in Mount Jackson, and one that I often reminded reporters about through the next 15 years.

While five-term mayor Dewey Jordan was unopposed on the ballot, there was enough discontent in town for a write-in candidate to take hold. Wait, not just take hold, but to dominate. Joe Williams, whose campaign included handing out pencils that said “Write-In Joe Williams For Mayor,” took a 202-122 decision over the incumbent. The loss so discombobulated Jordan that he “resigned” over the phone while I was trying to get a quote from him. The formal resignation happened the next night as the Mount Jackson Town Council appointed Williams as mayor two months before his official full term was to begin.

Williams served as mayor of the nearly 2,000-population town until earlier this week, when he died after a brief illness.

I only covered Mount Jackson for another year after his victory, but working at The Northern Virginia Daily allowed me to keep tabs on the town for years after the write-in win, and I saw Williams take easy victories in 2002, 2006 and 2010. I did not see much of Williams after 1999, but he was always gracious and forthcoming in our interviews while I still covered the town.

When I started covering Mount Jackson in 1997, it was facing a serious water crisis as several of its wells showed nitrate contamination. The first attempt at drilling a new well also failed because the water was similarly contaminated. The council, first with Jordan at the helm and then Williams, worked hard to find a solution with the help of the state. 

One of the things that probably cost Jordan his job was the insistence that Mount Jackson did not need a town manager to oversee its operations. Within a year of his election, Williams and the council hired Charles Moore to take on that job, and everything I heard from our reporters indicated that the town was operating quite well through the years I was at the paper in Strasburg.

It was sad to hear of Williams’ passing, but I was happy that one of the former Daily reporters who did such good work, Preston Knight, thought to pass the word along.

If I took nothing else away from Joe Williams’ victory over Dewey Jordan 15 years ago, it was that write-in campaigns should be taken seriously in local elections where turnout tends to be lower, and people can be more motivated to vote if the circumstances dictate.

There’s the old saw about all politics being local. I know one thing, they are often the most interesting.

So long to a mentor

I first set foot in Luray on Dec. 17, 1987. The only things I knew about the town were that it was the Page County seat (thanks to my Virginia government teacher Fran Atkinson) and that it was the home of Luray Caverns, which must have owned half of the billboards in Virginia.

I came to Luray to interview with John Waybright, the editor of the Page News and Courier. And man, I needed a full-time job. I had been at the Richmond Times-Dispatch for nearly two years, but it was only a part-time job, and despite the fact the people there liked me, I needed a little more seasoning. When a former Times-Dispatch part-timer who was working in Luray got a full-time gig on the sports desk in Richmond, it opened the door for me.

Luray is about 125 miles from Richmond, so I left plenty of time to get there in time for my interview. I killed a little time by going to the 7-Eleven on Main Street, where I got a Washington Post, a Daily News-Record (which I had never seen before) and a pack of Freshen-up Gum for a grand total of 97 cents and waited in my car until 1:55.

As I walked into the Page News and Courier office that afternoon, I had no idea what a big part of my life Luray, and in particular John Waybright, would become.

The interview went great, I passed a diabolical spelling test and an editing exercise, and I went back to Richmond to celebrate the holidays. Sometime before New Year’s Day, John called and offered me a job as a staff writer. The money was typically bad: $210 a week. But the value of the experience I gained in nine years at the Page News, the first eight with John at the helm, cannot be overstated.

John taught me to be fair, not play favorites in news coverage. He taught me to be flexible, to understand that news is ever changing as were the needs of the newspaper. But he also taught me to have fun in my chosen career, because if you were never going to become rich doing it, at least you could enjoy it.

John was the best boss you could hope for, running interference from the higher-ups, making sure to laud your successes. And going to his house to play board games was great entertainment when you were both poor and living in a small community. But it would have been fun anywhere.

He played a role in the careers of a whole lot of journalists who still ply their trades across Virginia and elsewhere in the East, although our ranks are thinning due to career changes and layoffs. But we all hold John and Luray dear in our hearts.

There are probably a million stories I’ll remember over the next few days, but having just heard this afternoon that he had passed away after years of declining health, I’ll tell this one:

John always saw us as being in competition with WLCC-FM, the local radio station, so I knew it would be a tough sale when one of my friends over there, John Natalie, wanted me to join him on local high school basketball and football games. But he also knew the value of cross-promotion long before it became the norm. So he said I could work for the radio station (and collect those $10 checks) as long as I was introduced as “Page News and Courier sports editor Charles Pannunzio.” As it turned out, that worked  both for the paper and the radio station as well, since that let people know I had a day job and added a little credence to my commentary.

I got to see John one last time when I was back in Virginia before Labor Day last year, and I told him it had been 25 years since we first met, and how much his help had meant to me ever since. He asked me if I was in town to get a haircut, since that was often a reason I visited Luray after 1997.

I’m glad I got to see him, and stay in touch over the years through the Internet and Facebook. I hope the people of Luray realize what a standard-bearer they lost today. And I hope they are still printing a paper in heaven.

-30-

Snow job

It was with a mixture of jealousy and relief that I watched my old stomping grounds take a direct hit from the “Snowquester” winter storm that hit the Shenandoah Valley and other areas west of Washington on Wednesday.

Jealousy, because as a reporter you want to be where the action is, where things are going on. I always had more fun going out into poor weather talking to people who had to fight the elements, whether for work or pleasure, than I did sitting in a town council chamber. Relief, because I have done the biggest of the big storms in 1993, 1996, 2003, 2006 and 2010, so I was glad someone else got to take the reins on this one.

Or did they? I heard from a few folks at my old paper that a skeleton staff was left in place to put out the Thursday paper while everyone else was directed to stay home. Oh, and use a vacation day.

Events like this are the very reason people are still reading the paper. I’m sure sales will be better than any other usual Thursday in the last six months so you need to put your best foot forward. You need to show off what you can do. And you don’t do that by telling the reporters to stay home and asking on Facebook for readers to send you their photos and if they are good enough they might appear in tomorrow’s paper. I’m not sure where this directive came from, but it’s pretty misguided if you ask me. And if you don’t ask me, I still think it’s misguided.

Yes, tell the reporters if they are afraid for their safety or if child-care plans change because schools are closed and they WANT to take the day off they can. But don’t TELL them not to work and then dock them a vacation day. With modern technology allowing a newsroom to operate from a McDonalds and people already in place closer to their homes, you can get some coverage that's not within a mile of the office or done over the phone. This would add some more depth and perspective to the story.

But why would you want to do that when you can get your Facebook followers to give you plenty of free material? Of course, in many cases, you get what you pay for. With the ease of use of a lot of these tools more people than ever think they are photographers or writers, and are willing to give their stuff away for nothing. It makes it even more difficult for those of us who do this for a living.

When I started working on this entry I thought I would harken back to the February 2010 storm that dumped more than 30 inches of snow on Winchester. I think the city will end up with about half that from Snowquester, which is still a major storm in the Shenandoah Valley. If you wonder what 30 inches of snow looks like, here are photos of my car and my front porch as that Super Bowl weekend storm was winding down.

The Saturday morning of the storm I went around and got some photos for the paper. Yes, it was fun, but it was also to help the newspaper better cover the storm and try to gain a little more respect in the community. I was gratified when I walked into the Sheetz on Valley Avenue and there was a stack of Dailys there.

I struck up a conversation with a guy who was drinking a cup of coffee, and when he said he wanted to tell me something about my newspaper, I was ready to hear why we were No.2 in town, what we were doing wrong. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say how much more he appreciated our paper after being able to get copy that morning while the other daily in town was nowhere to be found.

It’s all about serving your readers. And telling your staff to not bother covering the biggest weather event over the past few years doesn’t do that. Asking your readers to give you their photos basically says you cannot add anything to the conversation. And when you no longer bring anything to the table, they will soon find a way to get along without you.

So long to an old friend

In New Orleans, there is no longer a daily paper. Soon, Syracuse and Harrisburg will also face that reality. But in all three cases, the framework of the daily is still there, reporters will still post stories to the web those days that the newspaper is not printed, and longtime readers can take comfort in knowing their source of information is still available, although in a different format.

That’s one thing readers of The News & Messenger don’t have in Prince William County. When the Manassas-based paper closes shop in seven weeks, the InsideNOVA website will go with it, and residents of Virginia’s second-largest county will lose their most reliable source of news.

I’m particularly interested in The News & Messenger’s fate for several reasons. I was a stringer for the two papers that were merged to create it, the Journal-Messenger of Manassas and the Potomac News of Woodbridge. I actually applied for the assistant sports editor slot at the Potomac News twice in the 1990s. And the J-M was a worthy adversary when I first got to The Northern Virginia Daily in 2000, proving to be the last paper to beat us in the Virginia Press Association sweepstakes, although that win essentially took place before Bob Wooten arrived at the Daily at the end of 1999.

Some six years before that, I got a call from the Potomac News asking if I would write a story from a Brentsville-Page County football game I was already covering in Shenandoah that Friday. Sure, I said. Around that time the News had launched a Sunday edition (and put its Saturday paper on hiatus), so doing a story and stats for them still involved filing Friday night, but not on the deadlines I would face with the J-M in 1995-96 or Orange County Register.

While the story was well-received, the Potomac News did not have anything else for me, so when J-M sports editor Josh Barr got in touch with me the next fall, I started covering Manassas Park and Brentsville when they would play at Page or Luray. In two years, I probably wrote seven or eight stories, covering football, basketball and even the Region B volleyball tournament. Those $25 checks came in handy at the time.

As I moved on to the Daily News-Record and The Northern Virginia Daily, I always kept an eye on what they were doing in Manassas and Woodbridge. I have always been a proponent of newspapers being local, doing what they can do the best. Sure, The Washington Post and Washington television stations cover Prince William County, if you consider showing up whenever something explodes as coverage. There was plenty of stuff that you’d never hear about if not for the truly local paper: City councils, boards of supervisors, education coverage. All of the “unsexy” stuff that does not translate to television but affects people’s lives every day.

When were the television stations and the Post interested in the Shenandoah Valley? When a hurricane was on the way, when a mobile home blew up and when the Salahis instigated some sort of hijinks. Similarly, they concentrate their efforts on Fairfax and kind of let Prince William twist in the wind. So the Potomac News and the J-M had their niche.

Until they were merged. Until Media General decided to close down the presses in 2009 and start printing the paper 75 miles away in Hanover County, squeezing in the run between editions of the Times-Dispatch. Factor in the time it would take to get the papers back to Prince William County and the deadlines created their own issues. I am not sure what time the News & Messenger goes to press these days, but when the change was made in 2009 it was too early to get much (if any) live prep coverage in the paper. And just like those local governmental stories, something local newspapers do better than anyone else is high school sports. That is, until your ability to do so is compromised.

Oh sure, that coverage can be found on the website so if it doesn’t make the paper, just look there. Except for the people who don’t want to look there, who have found it in their newspaper all these years and do not understand why that is being taken away from them.

I was shocked to see that The Journal & Messenger’s circulation had fallen to 10,000 (from 22,132 as separate papers in 2005) until I starting thinking of what it had become. I hear it has about 26,000 likes on Facebook and the InsideNOVA website is quite popular. But the center of the operation was marginalized, and the prospects of making it profitable again were slim.

Interestingly, however, the plug is being pulled on the website too, probably because without print income it is impossible to keep it operating. That leaves readers in Prince William County several weeklies and websites such as Patch to keep them informed.

Because of the special circumstances – proximity to Washington, printing on early deadlines, and the recent purchase along with most of Media General’s other papers among them – the loss of the News & Messenger is not a canary in a mineshaft. But it is disappointing to me, both in seeing good journalists lose their jobs and readers lose a reliable source of information.