There is your opening – and you can take one of two paths.

A. You could offer your services as a part-timer or stringer to Kevin with a focus on football and other sports at Dublin and Livermore schools and other media-underexposed schools and at least get back into game at Media News. Or,

B. You could start you own advertiser supported Bay area prep school and college sports news website. You can bring on-board your own stringers to do the coverage and you could feature video clips from each game. You can get independent contractors to sell the advertising. Being the boss, you have complete freedom to pursue interesting story angles – surely there is a referee or other football official who has been officiating for 30, 40, or 50 years – what a great feature story!

Here in Florida we have some new prep rules coming into effect this year – no horsecollar tackles and chin straps are now just as off-limits as a facemask or helmet opening. Another great feature story to bring football officails into and also the state high school athletic commission. You can develop sources within the colleges and schools. Kids being kids, somebody is going to get caught shootin’
‘roids or in some other substance abuse violation at some point – you could blow the lid off and end up as a guest on ESPN and then write a book on prep sports substance abuse.

You could regularly feature background articles on collegiate scouts – some from the Bay area – some from places like Nebraska and Florida.

You could do a feature article on a former local player that went far away to college – like say Boise State and is doong well.

You could do in-depth analysis of the opposing teams that selected Bay area prep schools will face each week.

Obviously I favor choice B. over choice A. since I got so enthused over that option.

The bottom line is this – I have divined from reading Kevin Keane’s web chat is that he is a man without passion. He has been drinking Media News’ corporate KoolAid for far too long and his primary focus is circling the wagons and trying to hang onto his Executive Editor position, salary, benefits, and perks. Creating news products that the Bay Area develop a voracious appetite for is beyond his capabilities as he cuts this, slashes that, and downsizes the next unfortunate batch of employees.

I hope this helps…

Come to Ohio and find out how the people live that actually do the work and pay the taxes to support you do-nothing boobs that are marooned physically and mentally on both touchy-feely-goody-goody East and West Coasts.

Corporations look to the bottom line and people no longer can wait past 6:00 AM to get their paper before they go to work so they turn on their televisions and computers. But none of this means that print publishing is dead. People still want to hold their news (and their store flyers) in their hand. All this means is that print publishers need to get smarter about their product, but I’ve yet to see the answers come out of the boardroom. The only answer that they can seem to come up with is to have legions of newspaper people, from editorial to production to circulation have their nose pressed to the glass looking for the jobs that are no longer there. So good luck, Aaron, like many of us, you are going to need it.

And Jan, editing your own work is very different from editing someone else’s. Producing electronic media is not the same as producing print media but that is a very different subject.

I too am unemployed. Not good!

Wishing you much success in your quest.