By CHET FUSSMAN
Florida Times-Union

	GENERAL SESSION

The future role of newspapers is up for debate these days.

What's more certain is that newspaper sports staffs turned in some exceptional work in 2004, often under difficult and challenging circumstances.

Several examples were cited in the session "It's Not All Bad News, Folks: Celebrating Our APSE Successes." They included the investigative reporting on baseball steroids and BALCO by the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News; the Charlotte (Fla.) Sun-Herald's Football 2004 special section, produced in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane; and an award-winning project profiling an inner-city chess club from the Commercial Appeal in Memphis.

The Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal was "an investigative reporter's wet dream," said session moderator Mike Fannin, assistant managing editor/sports for The Kansas City Star. "Both papers raised the bar for sports investigative reporting."

The Chronicle's duo of Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada helped uncover one of the largest sports doping scandals in history, and accessed grand jury testimony of sluggers Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, who admitted they had taken illegal steroids.

There was no magic to the duo's success. They used hard work, patience and superior reporting skills.

"You had to build sources and gain trust," said Williams, whose previous investigative experience focused mostly on government, not sports. "The grand jury testimony was a year of working with people."

Williams and Fainaru-Wada's work went beyond quoting anonymous sources.

They also found a way to get documents despite limited access.

The editing process was arduous, added Fainaru-Wada, who worked on the Chronicle's sports staff before joining its investigative team. The duo said it wasn't uncommon to have to go back to a source three times after the story went through several editors.

Almond of the San Jose Mercury News was in Argentina when the raid on BALCO occurred. He dove into the story when he returned.

"I think this is going to be the biggest scandal in drug history," Almond said he told his editors. "I wanted to get their attention. I didn't know it was going to be true."

David Manning / David Manning Photography The panelists, left to right: Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle; Craig Lancaster and Elliott Almond of the San Jose Mercury News; Zack McMillin and Gary Robinson of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and John Fineran of the Charlotte (Fla.) Sun Herald.

Almond's stories included e-mails between BALCO Labs owner Victor Conte Jr. and his athletes, and detailed the effects of performance-enhancing drugs.

The Mercury News listed 27 athletes alleged to have used the designer steroid THG. The list included some of the highest-profile stars of baseball, football and track and field.

The reporting by the Chronicle and Mercury News immediately cast doubt on some of Major League Baseball's most sacred records, and resulted in congressional hearings and sweeping changes in steroid policy from all the major sports.

While the Bay area papers created a firestorm, the Charlotte Sun-Herald battled a real one. When Hurricane Charley barreled into southwest Florida, damaging the newspaper's headquarters and several area high schools, news coverage and special section priorities quickly changed.

The Sun Herald continued to publish, and shifted gears on its football preview section.

"We needed to change and rebuilding was going to be our theme," said Sun Herald executive sports editor John Fineran.

The cover of the Sun-Herald's special section was a local high school football coach looking up at a mangled football goal post. The headline read: Rebuilding year.

The 40-page section incorporated several Hurricane Hero stories detailing how players were helping local residents cope and rebuild.

Fineran said he stumbled onto the dramatic cover photo while with DeSoto County High football coach Gary Morton, who was assessing the school's damage.

"I just took a camera that day," Fineran said. "The photo staff was taking care of news. It was kind of dumb luck."

Zack McMillin's second consecutive victory in project reporting did not involve luck. It took about five months of reporting and a special commitment from Commercial Appeal sports editor Gary Robinson.

Robinson couldn't spare a reporter for that amount of time, but did anyway, freeing McMillin from other duties to report on the chess team at American Way Middle School, a diverse group of inner-city students who won a national championship.

"I trusted Zack because I knew the passion he brought to anything he wrote," Robinson said. McMillin also had a track record: he won first place in APSE project reporting the previous year for a series on the 30th anniversary of the 1973 Memphis State basketball team.

The paper ran the weeklong chess team series in sports, and devoted an inside jump page with big art each day.

McMillin said feedback from the story was gratifying. In an era where newspapers execs worry that people don't have time to read the paper, McMillin's story was proof that readers will read long, detailed stories if the idea is compelling.

"If you give them something that engages them," McMillin said, "they'll hang in there and ask for more."

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