Journalism has a tendency to age journalists.
That’s not exactly Aristotle-worthy, but it’s painfully true. I can vouch for that from experience, having spent time in the industry since I was a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed cub stringer patrolling the sidelines of high school football games as a freshman at the University of Massachusetts. The year was 2004, and as the Boston Red Sox were breaking the curse, I was watching Franklin Tech play Pathfinder on a random Friday night under the lights in Thorndike.
Much has changed since then. I’ve seen reporters and editors come and go from the hallowed halls of Hope Street, departing the palatial Recorder newsroom for greener pastures or retirement. In the past two years alone, we’ve lost elder statesmen and women with decades of experience and knowledge of Franklin County from their respective perches.
This is a long-winded way of saying the times, they are a-changin.’
While journalism is as important as it ever was, at least in my eyes, there’s no way to sugarcoat the past 12 months from a journalist’s perspective. A mere days away from bidding this year adieu and good riddance, here’s the official statement from the sports department: 2020 sucked.
Excuse our bluntness.
We’ve battled layoffs, early deadlines and smaller sections. Just as things were getting into a promising groove following last winter’s strong high school sports season, the sports world (and rest of the world, really) came to a crashing halt in March due to COVID-19. There was no shortage of news during the months that followed, though there was indeed a shortage of sports. Writing sports for a daily newspaper during a pandemic is about as difficult as it sounds. With so much of our resources and space normally devoted to the day-to-day games and events taking place throughout the county, not having much of anything happening for months on end took its toll.
That’s not to say there weren’t important issues to tackle. I spent hours upon hours locked in Zoom meetings with the MIAA, as the organization debated the issue of whether to play high school sports in the spring (they ultimately didn’t). There were more meetings with boards of health, learning about the nuances of local government and the intersection of branches that sometimes felt like an episode of “Parks and Recreation.”
Those stories aren’t why I got into writing about sports, but with little in the way of actual sports to write about this year, our department got back to basics: telling stories.
I wrote a series on Franklin County runners, where I learned about the lives of members of a bustling running community and met some great people along the way. There were features on student-athletes, particularly graduating seniors who didn’t get a chance to play one final spring season. There were tales of golfers making their mark on the summer amateur circuit, a Marine veteran honored by the Boston Bruins. Without the same day-to-day reporting requirements, it was a time to celebrate the people in our area. To be able to do that, I am grateful.
Talking to the people in our towns, telling their stories, that’s what I’ll take away from 2020. Newspapers and journalism continue to undergo significant change. Our company is no exception. But as the calendar prepares to turn into 2021, let’s hope there’s still a place and readership for local stories about local people. I still want to talk to them, and write about them.
For now, we will spend the final week of 2020 highlighting some of the top stories and newsworthy items that ran in the pages of the Recorder sports section this year. Through the week, we’ll be rolling out 10 tales (two per day) from 2020. We hope you all enjoy the final days of this year, with hopes and wishes (and more sports) for a better 2021.
— Jeff Lajoie, Sports Editor