Fred Faour

Newspaper: Houston Chronicle

Career background: A Houston lifer. Was introduced to the business by my late father (also named Fred Faour) who worked on the Chronicle sports desk for 29 years, and my mother, Pat Monych, who was the first female sports editor in Texas in the early 1970s at the Texas City Sun. I got my start answering phones in the Chronicle sports department at age 16 in 1981. From there, I worked the agate desk five nights a week while going to college at the University of Houston. I was hired as a fulltime copy editor after graduating in 1987, and was promoted to Sunday sports editor in 1989. After leaving the business in the early 1990s, I returned to the Chronicle as a part-timer in 1995, covering horse racing, working desk and trying all sorts of other careers on the side. That lasted until 1997, when I was hired as assistant sports editor.

APSE activities: Southwest Region Chair for the past two years. Before that, I moderated and put together many panels at the regional level. The last two years, I've been the "newsletter pest," compiling the region reports for the newsletter.

Up close and personal: Wife, Ruth Piller, is a prominent appellate attorney at the Houston law firm Hays-McConn. Her career supports my journalism habit. I've got two kids: a son, Will, 6, and a daughter, Katie, 3. Here's a shock: they both love sports, especially baseball and football, and Will plays a mean Texas Hold 'Em.

Quotable: "To me, APSE is about teaching, learning, and developing relationships. It's about sharing ideas that make us better journalists and improve the quality of our sections. My goal would be to reach out and get more sports editors to share in that. I think we should work hard to recruit not just new members, but people who will participate in the organization at both the national and regional levels. We need new people we can both teach and learn from. We need more people who love APSE and want to keep it strong and help it grow."

Fun factoid: Other brief and (and mostly unsuccessful) careers include stints as an adjunct college professor, scriptwriter, magazine publisher, professional gambler and horse racing expert. The latter involved producing and hosting a weekly horse racing TV show on statewide cable, and co-hosting a weekly radio show in Houston ... Back in the day, was lead guitarist and singer for the rock band Mercenary, and I can still play a mean Yngwie J. Malmsteen.

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