Every Wednesday
On riffing, noodling, a writing practice, and the Great Sports Media Guy Reset
Let me tell you the story of how I became a full-time columnist at age 21.
I had just been hired at The Times Herald in Olean. It was April of 1999, and I was working three days a week as a cityside reporter while I finished my degree at St. Bonaventure.
Early April that year was the fifth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death by suicide.1 I asked Pat Vecchio, the city editor at the time, if I could write a column about it. He said sure. The next week, I came to him with a column that I had written for Denny Wilkins’ opinion writing class, one that Denny said I should try to get published.
I remember Pat walking through the old newsroom on Norton Drive when he called out to me. “Hey Bo!2 You want the Wednesday column?” I said sure. “It’s yours.”
For the next five years, right up until I left the paper, I wrote a non-sports column every Wednesday. I wrote about music, about politics, about low-carb diets, about whatever I was interested in. Some of them I remember fondly — writing about music being everywhere in St. Thomas, exploring an old cemetery in downtown Charlotte, about George Harrison and Elvin Jones when they died. Many of these columns were terrible, and I’m glad they exist only in a handful of libraries and in a box in my parents’ house. I once got reams of hate mail from Clay Aiken fans.
But man, I loved writing that column. It gave me a chance to write about something other than sports. It forced me to read other sections of the paper, to be curious. Because whether I wanted to or not, whether I felt like it or not, I knew I had to come up with an idea and actually write it. The point of the column was doing it.
Every Wednesday.
My friend and chief of staff
celebrated one year of his excellent Substack, . He wrote about a back-and-forth he had with A.J. Daulerio about creating a thing here.Building a community of loyal readers is what is important and you do that through a regular cadence of publishing.
This is something I’ve struggled with ever since I started the OG Sports Media Guy back in 2010. It’s the balance between doing this regularly and taking it seriously and feeling overwhelmed by that regularity and seriousness.
Part of it has been busy times at my day job, whether teaching, developing and teaching courses, or working on major writing projects, when it feels hard to justify spending time writing here.
Part of this is the nature of the subject material. This has tended to be a blog that reacts to things happening in the research world or in the sports media world, and there are often long stretches of time where nothing really new or interesting is happening. But I can see the artificiality of that constraint. It’s a justification for not writing, for not being curious and looking around and sharing with you what I find.
Part of it is perfectionism. Let’s be honest, a BIG part of this is perfectionism.
Back when I was on WordPress, when you started a blog on the site the default title was something like “Just Another WordPress Blog.” The kind of self-effacing popular with white dudes of a certain age. Man, I hated the thought of being just another blog. There’s always a pressure when I sit down to write that this has to be good. This has to be big. This has to be smart. This has the one that’s gonna go viral, that’s going to impress the people I want to impress.
And man, that’s no way to write or live.
It’s writing and life as an output or as a result, not as practice.
And I love the idea of a writing practice.
, he of the must read , talked about this on The Other 51 earlier this year:It’s one of the reasons I love and admire
and his , because it is, in his own words, “a perpetual work in progress.”From Seth Godin:
You’ll need to find a place to noodle. A place to take risks and do things that might not work, where the stakes are real but the stakes aren’t so high that you forget why you’re doing this work in the first place.
So let’s take the pressure off.
Let’s noodle and riff and see what happens.
Call it the Great Sports Media Guy Reset of 2024.
What it means for you
It means that you’ll find a new piece written here every Wednesday. I’m not sure how long this is going to last, but for here and now, I’m putting a stake in the ground.
Sometimes, it’ll be a well-crafted, well-researched, well-thought piece. Once a month, there will be a research roundup (AEJMC is this week, so look for that soon). Sometimes, it’ll be a riff on something that I find interesting. Sometimes, it will barely touch the ideas of sports or media.3
If you have an idea for something you’d like me to write about, let me know in the comments or by message.
sent me a great thought I’m already working on for a future post.I love the idea of a writing practice. I love the idea of noodling in public, of trying things out, seeing where things go. And I hope you enjoy taking these little trips with me.
Every Wednesday.
Speaking of AEJMC …
Best of luck to all of my friends presenting at AEJMC in Philadelphia this week, especially those in my beloved Sports Communications Interest Group. Like I said earlier, I’m going to be doing a research roundup from the conference, so if you have a paper or poster you want featured here, drop me a message.
Last year, I wrote an academic conference survival guide for new attendees. Here it is again (and this year’s out-of-the-conference-hotel recommendation is the Mütter Museum.)
The key point:
Don’t stress out about your presentation. Your poster looks great, really. And if you’re doing the job market - you’re going to crush it. Nothing that happens at a conference will define your career. It’ll all be fine.
This felt like an impossibly long time at the time. This past April was 30 years since Kurt’s death - meaning he’s been dead three years longer than he was alive.
My sister and my family called me Bo growing up. Since I shared the OTH newsroom with my sister at that point in our careers and she was “Mo,” the Bo nickname carried over.
And yes, The Other 51 will be back on your podcast feeds soon as well.
Looking forward to Wednesdays!
Man, I cannot wait for this. Awesome, Brian.