Savage Words: Journalism has changed, but I’m confident we’re getting it right

It’s tough to figure out where local journalism is going.

When I declared my journalism major as a young college student at USF, things looked a lot different then. In 1989, and I’m going to date myself here a tad, I wrote my first story for The Vessel, the student run newspaper on campus. 

I wrote that story on a typewriter in a little room in the Norman B. Mears library in the center of campus.

A typewriter.

By the time I graduated in 1992, there were some small, Apple computers in a lab in the journalism department. I recall typing some words out, dragging my mouse over a word and “highlighting” it. There was a B at the top of the screen, and an I. A fellow student told me to click on the B and I.

My mind was blown when the word I had highlighted actually turned to BOLD and Italics.

Needless to say, it’s changed a lot. 

I recall covering the 1990 Class B State Basketball Tournament in Aberdeen for the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls. I was still a student at USF, and that trip to Aberdeen was my first real ‘road trip’ covering sports. I’ve put in countless miles since then, covering a myriad of sporting events, but that State B 35 years ago was my first.

After Harrold beat Warner in the championship game that night, I was on a high. I had a hotel room, but I couldn’t sleep. So I drove back to Sioux Falls in the middle of the night.

I remember stopping in Brookings for a pit stop at about 5 a.m., and on the newspaper shelf next to the checkout was the early edition of the Argus with my Harrold story on the front. That was wild to me.

Fast forward a few years later, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a game story appear online just a few minutes after it was filed. It was that way for me on Monday when I covered Iowa State vs. Mississippi State at the Sanford Pentagon for the Associated Press. Just minutes after I wrote the story, it was on ESPN.com.

So it’s been a strange transformation in the nearly four decades I’ve been doing this. If somebody would have told me this is what journalism was going to look like 34 years after graduating, I’m not so certain I would have done it.

But honestly, I’m rejuvenated by newspapers like the Brandon Valley Journal. There’s still a place for them, and they’re thriving, all the while daily newspapers and large news gathering services are struggling.

In the Oct. 22 edition of the Journal, editor Jill Meier wrote a big feature on the Brandon Valley Hockey Association and the grand opening of their new indoor arena. During the season, we cover the Ice Cats, cover them as well – if not better – than any newspaper across the state.

It made me wonder about the Sioux Falls Flyers, the youth hockey association in Sioux Falls. I wonder when was the last time anyone wrote anything about them? I did a column – my first ever – about the Flyers when I first started at the Argus in 1991. Honestly, and I mean this, I’m not sure if they’ve been covered since.

At Brandon Valley’s football game against Sioux Falls Jefferson on Oct. 23, I thought about those kids on Jefferson’s roster who pulled off an upset over the top-ranked Lynx. Who wrote about them? Who wrote about their last-second field goal to end Brandon Valley’s undefeated season?

In fairness, there were stories about the game on some Sioux Falls-based websites. But nothing in the newspaper. 

Nothing.

I think about the kids in Sioux Falls that for the past several years now, really don’t have newspaper clippings to save about what they’ve done in high school. I actually feel kind of bad for them, for the state of journalism in larger communities.

Jefferson kicker Braylon Erickson will forever have many stories to tell his children and grandchildren about the night he booted a 28-yarder to beat the Lynx as time expired. But he won’t have a newspaper clipping to point to, unless he saved the Journal’s coverage of the game.

I’d like to think we cover Brandon and Valley Springs as well as any community newspaper in the state. In fact, I’m certain of it.

So thank you subscribers, advertisers and readers of all kinds who read the Journal each week.

Here’s to hoping you’ll have newspaper clippings to cherish for years to come.