By BILL BRADLEY
Tennessean

Greg Brownell

Brownell is the tall, soft-spoken guy in the windbreaker. He is also APSE's newly elected third vice-president who has already made a loud statement with his section.

As sports editor of the Glens Falls (N.Y.) Post-Star since 1999, Brownell has earned a reputation for producing a section that does big events very, very well. The section annually treats the New York state high school basketball tournaments like the Final Four.

For its efforts, the Post-Star has won APSE's Triple Crown three years in a row, a feat that's tough to do for any paper one year. Even more amazing, the 33,000 circulation daily competes in APSE's most crowded category with more than 100 small papers entering the annual contest.

What's Brownell's secret?

"Having no personal life helps," Brownell joked. "I love being a sports editor and I love doing what I love to do. And I spend a lot of time in the office."

That's not surprising to his boss, Post-Star managing editor Ken Tingley, who has often found Brownell doing tasks that many sports editors would delegate in a New York minute.

"If he has an ego, I haven't found it yet," Tingley said. "One thing I keep telling him is that a sports editor should not do the agate page. But every so often I go back there and find him doing it so someone else can do a takeout or an enterprise story.

"He is a great writer. ... But he keeps giving up his own writing voice so someone gets the opportunity to use their's."

Brownell will remain as Third Vice-President until the summer of 2006, when another election will be held before the convention that year in Las Vegas.

He replaced Kim Orendor of the Davis (Calif.) Enterprise, who left journalism to pursue a career as a Christian fiction author.

As a member of the Executive Committee, Brownell will represent those members whose circulation is under 40,000. He will also chair the APSE Recruitment Committee and write a column for the APSE newsletter.

Brownell joined the Post-Star as a sportswriter in 1981, became assistant sports editor in 1983 then Sports Editor in 1999. He served as the chair of APSE's Elections Turnout committee last year.

Not a bad resume for a guy who once balked at journalism in college.

"I never even considered (journalism) until my junior in college at Plattsburg State. I was in a bar and the sports editor of the college newspaper said he had an opening for reporter to cover the college field hockey team," Brownell said. "I told him, 'I don't have time for this; and who wants to work for a college newspaper anyway.'

"A week later, I said, 'Ah, alright.' After that, all I wanted to do was work for a newspaper."

The Post-Star hired Brownell out of college on Sept. 14, 1981. As sports evolved in Glens Falls area, so did his job. For more than 20 years, he has covered the usual array of preps, a Class AA baseball team and for many years he had the section's most important beat, minor-league hockey.

Tingley, who had been sports editor since arriving in 1988, said the decision to make Brownell his successor was simple. The tough part was convincing Brownell.

"He was ready. He covered the big events. He was very meticulous beat writer. He was one of those guys who I felt confident to turn over planning to. There were many times I was able to turn over the scheduling and big event coverage to him so I could go off and do column writing."

Brownell said he owed being a sports editor to Tingley who "turned a dinosaur into the a sports editor." However, it's not always a blessing having the previous sports editor as your boss, he said. After all, the Post-Star was an annual APSE section winner under Tingley as well.

"It's a double-edge sword," Brownell said. "I'm not going to have to explain why we should send somebody to a Triple Crown race or why it's important to do this or that. On the other hand, I'm not going slip anything past him, either."

Added Tingley: "Anybody who has ever switched from sports to news really knows how difficult it is to leave behind sports. I'm sure it was very difficult for Greg to have a former sports editor to look over his shoulder.

"Thankfully he didn't run screaming from the building. ... It was great to turn over to him what we thought was already a pretty good product. He has taken what we accomplished and taken it to next level."

After all this success, why is Brownell still in Glens Falls after 23 years? He said its because he likes connecting with readers.

"I'm a true believer that you are never closer to the readers than you are at a small newspaper," Brownell said. "I get e-mails, calls, people stop and see me in the mall. It's all a matter of listening to what they want."