Reno's Gustus elected Region vice-chair

By MICHAEL ANASTASI
Chair, Commissioners Committee
Managing Editor/Sports, Features, Copy Desks & Photography, Salt Lake Tribune

Story posted on Aug. 4, 2008

The West Region has scheduled its annual region meeting for Monday, Nov. 10 in Sacramento. The day-long gathering will include a session on creating and executing prep sports enterprise, coordinated in part by Loren Nelson of the North County Times in Escondido, Calif. A key aspect of the session will be showcasing examples of prep enterprise from staffs both large and small from throughout the region, but out-of-region editors are also invited to send Nelson PDFs of their best prep enterprise work. The e-mail is lnelson@nctimes.com. Another session will center around the art and skills of sports department management.

At the APSE convention in Minneapolis, West members elected Lauren Gustus of the Reno Gazette-Journal as region vice chair.

Other news from the region:

■ In Fresno, Sports Editor Robert Zizzo is becoming metro editor of The Fresno Bee effective Aug. 4. An in-house replacement in Sports is expected to be named.

■ In Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Times lost 13 from the sports department on July 14. Alex Kimball left on his own to become an NFL editor at ESPN.com. The others were part of the Tribune Company's reduction in force. Gone are reporters Larry Stewart, Bob Mieszerski (also the horse racing handicapper), Martin Henderson, Eric Stephens, Pete Yoon and Jaime Cardenas, assistant sports editor Bob Rohwer, copy editors Bob Cuomo, Paul Netter and Jay Christensen and designers Joel Huerto and Steve Pratt. The losses will require the Times to drop its horse racing handicap and some horse racing coverage.

■ The Los Angeles Daily News family suffered a loss with the death of veteran sportswriter Matt McHale from complications of diabetes.

McHale, who also worked in Pasadena, the Orange County Register and New York, mostly as a baseball writer, was well respected. An obituary can be read here and a column by colleague Steve Dilbeck here.

■ In Reno, Johanna Huybers, a full-time student at University of Nevada, Reno, and a full-time sports copy editor at the Reno Gazette-Journal, recently was awarded an APSE scholarship for $1,500.

The senior-to-be will put the money toward her final year at UNR. Dionne Wilson, a former news copy editor, joined the sports desk in July.

■ In Sacramento, The Sacramento Bee launched a redesign on July 29 that included five pages of new newshole each week in Sports, offering some new features and restoring open pages to some theme packages.

The changes start at the top, where Sports Editor Bill Bradley will be writing "Leading Off," a short column that touches on a hot sports topic or takes you behind the scenes in our section. The column will also give you tips on the best things to do each day. Bradley has also started writing a weekly guide to sports on the Web, called "Sitelines."

Page 2 will be renamed "Second & Short," offering quick reads on local and national briefs. A new Page 2 feature, "Sideline Chatter," will focus on people in Sports news. The daily baseball page will look dramatically different. It focuses on the key story of the day while still offering fans the boxscores and important Major League Baseball news.

The improvements will also result in five expanded theme pages:

    >> Wednesdays: "GolfPlus" will move here from Thursdays, running year-round with some new features.

    >> Thursdays: "PrepsPlus" page moves from Tuesdays and returns Sept. 4 with its football preview package.

    >> Fridays: "MotorSportsPlus" expands to a full page, apprearing February-November.

    >> Saturdays: "PrepsPlus/Football edition" debuts Sept. 11 with expanded high school Friday night football coverage. In November, The Bee debuts "KingsPlus," a page devoted to the week ahead for Sacramento's NBA team.

    >> Sundays: "BaseballPlus" will features The Bee's weekly baseball notebook package and stats for the area minor-leaguers. In late October, those pages become "NBAPlus," Scott Howard-Cooper's weekly look at the league.

■ In Salt Lake City, The Salt Lake Tribune saw its year-over-year traffic for prep sports increase by three times with www.tribpreps.com, the prep sports site the organization launched last Aug. 1. By springtime, viewership on the site had passed the 1 million mark and is continuing to show steady growth.

The Utah chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announced its annual awards. Among those won by The Tribune was a sweep in the headline category, with sports copy editors Joe Gillespie, Dan Dickson and John Davis taking first through third, respectively.

Joe Baird, a former sports copy editor and beat writer for The Tribune who has worked as an environmental and goverment reporter and editor in recent years, was named as the replacement for Jon Clifford, who as deputy sports editor was responsible for day-to-day operations in the sports department. Clifford left the business to pursue a career with the State of Utah.

Michael Anastasi is the chair of the West Region. You can reach him at (801) 257-8905 or via e-mail at manastasi@sltrib.com.

 Back to news index | Back to home page