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I’ve had a love affair with newspapers almost since the day I was born.
Maybe that had to do with the fact that, as a baby, I was the main subject of my father’s weekly column in a little newspaper in Iowa called the Traer Star-Clipper. Or maybe it was that early photo of me on the family throne reading the newspaper (just like my dad) at age 2.
Whatever the imprint, my three kids never got it. Newspapers to them are as foreign as video games are to me. It makes me sad because they don’t know what they’re missing – the drama of the world told in in-depth stories and photos on a daily basis.
As a result, the newspaper industry seems to be under a death knell, with my ilk – golf writers – becoming an endangered species. In the past year, 25 major newspapers (that I know of) have eliminated their ink-stained golf scribes in places like Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. And, yes, right here in the East Valley.
Last week on www.golfobserver.com, the only Internet site that features many of the top stories in golf on a daily basis, Sal Johnson, one of the game’s leading statisticians and historians, penned an article entitled “The Death of the Newspaper Golf Writer.’’
“It’s just scary the way we’re disappearing,’’ said Johnson, who made me part of his story. “Your readers might not understand the magnitude of it yet, but I guarantee you they’ll realize it at some point, and actually miss those front-page stories that Bill Huffman has brought them over the years -- especially in a golf haven like Arizona.’’
According to the Department of Labor, over 30,000 newspaper employees have lost their jobs this year, a story that has developed in small chunks of 50 here and 100 there. One of those cuts came not long ago at the Tribune, where 142 employees lost their jobs.
Just last week the Arizona Republic laid off dozens of editors and writers – its third downsizing of 2008. And that was followed by the Rocky Mountain News in Denver announcing it would shut down its operation if the newspaper wasn’t sold by mid-January, as well as news that the “other’’ Tribune Company that owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times had filed for bankruptcy.
Granted those numbing newspaper stats aren’t as severe as what’s going on in the financial and auto industries, but you should be alarmed as we move more exclusively to the Internet to get our news. Bloggers aren’t journalists, and the lack of “watchdogs with ethics’’ is eventually bound to cost us dearly.
Actually, I would be surprised if many have empathy for my plight, which is hardly life or death. Hey, being a golf writer for the past 20 years at Arizona’s largest two newspapers has truly been a dream job. So many people have told me “I wish I had your job’’ over those two decades that I’ve actually felt guilty even if I never knew exactly why.
It has been a wonderful ride with a lot of wonderful people. Getting to know different types in golf such as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson, John Daly, Billy Mayfair, Tom Lehman, Nancy Lopez, Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa, Grace Park, Linda Vollstedt, Heather Farr, Karsten Solheim and Bob Goldwater, to name just a few, has been more fun than work. And being around the game’s greatest player ever also was very special even if I never really knew Tiger Woods.
I can still remember vividly the first of the 44 major championships I covered at the Country Club near Boston. That was the 1988 U.S. Open, and my highlight for the week was having a beer around midnight with Tom Watson in the parking lot of our Red Roof Inn. Just Tom and I shooting the (expletive) with a six-pack of Old Milwaukee – you would have thought I had died and gone to heaven!
But mostly I hitched my wagon to Arizona golf, and wrote the book “Arizona’s Greatest Golf Courses.’’ That was in 1999, the same year I started co-hosting Backspin The Golf Show on the radio, a medium that, thankfully, seems to be faring better than print these days.
A year later I joined The East Valley Tribune, which I added to a resume that included the Daily Iowan, the San Antonio Express-News, the Des Moines Register and the Arizona Republic. During those 35 years in newspapers, I was fortunate enough to represent my peers, who elected me as the national president of the Associated Press Sports Editors (1995-96) and to the executive board of the Golf Writers Association of America (1997-99).
So as I leave the newspaper industry, probably for good considering the job market out there is zilch, these are just a few of my most fond memories along with covering 20 Masters and 22 FBR Opens. I’m not going completely away, but I am moving over to the other side – the Internet.
Starting in January I’ll begin writing a column called “AzGolf at Large’’ for the Arizona Golf Association on its website (www.azgolf.org). It represents a new frontier, and I’m excited about the prospects of once again traveling this great state for golf and finding those untold stories in out-of-the-way places like Bisbee, Bullhead City, Page, Tubac and Pinetop.
I’ll admit, it’s a bittersweet path I’m on right now, and I probably will miss the ink-stained world even more than I can imagine. I thank you sincerely for reading my column in The Tribune over these past nine years, and hope you’ll join me again in the future.
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