The best newspaper man I ever worked with
Celebrating the great Chuck Pollock on his retirement
Chuck Pollock is the best newspaper man I ever worked with.
No sense in burying the lede. If I tried, he’d call me and tell me to get to the point, already.
So let’s stick with the point. Chuck Pollock is the best boss I’ve ever had. He is one of the most influential people in the history of sports journalism in Western New York.
Chuck retired this week from The Times Herald in Olean. His first gig was covering the Buffalo Braves (a team that hasn’t existed since 1978), and the Buffalo Bills, which had just moved into a brand new stadium in Orchard Park (the original Rich Stadium.) He started before O.J. Simpson had rushed for 2,000 yards, and ended with Josh Allen passing for more than 4.000.
From 1972-2023. Fifty one years at one small town newspaper tucked in the bottom corner of Western New York. What a career. You can read Chuck’s bittersweet farewell column here.
A life in journalism is one that’s inextricably linked to people. And Chuck Pollock was the best of all of those people.
He hired me as an intern in the fall of 1996, let me write a little more than most interns do. Helped me get hired cityside at the paper in the spring of 1999. That fall, when a certain other sibling left for the bigger paper up north, he let me slide right into the paper’s biggest beat, covering St. Bonaventure’s first NCAA Tournament team in 21 years. A few years later, he trusted a 25-year-old kid with a little bit of game but a whole lot to learn cover the biggest scandal in the program’s. history.
Chuck gave me the launching pad for all of my professional success - and since my professional success directly led to me meeting my wife and us having our daughter, he gave me the launching pad for my personal successes as well.
The first lesson I learned from Chuck Pollock: News is what people are talking about
If Chuck has a mantra, this is it. Any of the students he taught at St. Bonaventure can recite it. Those of us who worked for him can repeat it in our sleep.
Chuck learned it from Mike Abdo, who preceded him as TH sports editor and plucked him from a radio career in Bradford, Pa.
News is what people are talking about.
It’s not a perfect definition. Sometimes news is what people should be talking about, rather than what they already are.
But I love the definition so much and use it in my classes to this day.
I love it because it’s an active definition. It requires the journalist to actively listen. To be engaged with your readers, your audience, your community. To pay attention.
If you’re trying to figure out what to write on a given day, what stories to run on your website, asking yourself “What are people talking about?” is a pretty good place to start.
The second lesson I learned from Chuck: Have a local column in the paper every day.
This was such a point of pride for Chuck when I worked at the TH. Every single day, 365 days a year, there would be a locally written column in the sports section. I remember us claiming days up to two weeks in advance, when that week’s schedule would be posted.
It was a matter of discipline. Take one day off, and it becomes easier to take another. Then two more. And then it becomes a sporadic thing instead of a regular one.
All full time members of the sports department got to write columns. It’s how I was writing a regular column at the age of 22. I wasn’t that good, but I was better after getting to do it regularly for four years.
The strength of any sports section, especially ones at small town papers, is its personality. Chuck brought that. He was a gifted columnist, a five-tool writer who would be funny, charming, informative, cutting, and insightful - all in the same column. He was a must-read after any Bills or Bonnies game. He had the sense of the moment and the institutional memory to put any event, any outcome, into context.
(Fun fact: He wrote all of those columns using just one finger. It’s true. Rather than touch type with all 10 fingers, he typed with his pointer finger, using his thumb occasionally on the space bar. And dammit if he wasn’t faster than most other writers.)
Having a daily column, again, requires you to pay attention. It requires a sense of curiosity about the world, the discipline to write even when you don’t have your best stuff, the care to write when you could easily take the day off.
It honors your audience and your craft.
Chuck had plenty of chances to move to a bigger market, offers he turned down because he liked his life in the Southern Tier. He liked being able to cover all levels of all sports, he liked the pace of his life.
Part of me hates that we feel we have to say this. As if the value of someone who works at a small town newspaper exists only if they can demonstrate the ability to have moved on to a bigger job but chose not to leave. As if we have to prove their value and their worth. As if small town newspapers are only valuable as farm teams to The Times and The Post and ESPN.
But I also see this as part of something bigger.
Success is what you make of it, and success is how you define it on your terms.
For some, that was a major market job. For others, it was a life outside of a newspaper sports department.
But success is never about the number of people reading your work or the number of commas in your paycheck.
Success is the effort you put into your work, the joy you took from doing it, the life you built around and including it, the people you surround yourself with.
That’s the third lesson I learned from Chuck Pollock.
He was old school in all the best possible ways. He was the kindest, fairest, best boss I’ve ever had.
He was the best newspaper man I’ve ever known.