The Morning Paper And A Cup Of Joe

By: Mike Moran

April 14, 2010

Mike Moran was the chief spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee through thirteen Games, 1980-2002. The Omaha, Nebraska native was the Sports Information Director at the University of Colorado for a decade before joining the USOC in 1978 as it left New York City for Colorado Springs. He was the Senior Communications Counselor for NYC2012, New York City’s Olympic bid group from 2003-2005 and is now a media consultant. Reach him at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  and read more of his columns at www.coloradospringssports.org

Scanning the impressive list of the 94^th Pulitzer Prize for Journalism winners and their estimable triumphs dramatically raised my spirits this week, because anyone in my chosen career or one related to it has been saddened by what is happening to America’s newspapers, so suddenly and achingly on a path to some kind of unwarranted irrelevancy………..as well, I have enjoyed the plaudits lavished this week on Dave Philipps  of The Gazette (Pulitzer Prize nominee for Local Reporting), the gifted John Hazlehurst of the Colorado Springs Business Journal  (Reporter of the Year by the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists), and the Colorado Springs Independent (three first place awards in the Excellence In Journalism category among Rocky Mountain region papers from the same organization)………….I am among millions of mature Americans who begin their day with several newspapers alongside their coffee and oatmeal, a habit now ingrained over four decades and among the most pleasurable of them all………..what the newspaper has brought me, personally and professionally, over the now 44 years in the public and media relations world, even as a college newspaper school sports editor, has no price attached to it…………..”priceless” as the television commercial tells us…………when I chose Journalism as my college major and fancied career, it was easy……….my father was a University of Nebraska journalism graduate who nonetheless became a printer, and my aunt and uncle served long and faithfully on the staff of the Omaha World Herald……….on a simmering June day in 1966 when I was presented my diploma in the football stadium at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, I had already been a sports reporter and announcer for three years at the local NBC affiliate.  Circumstance and good fortune led me to the PR world in the next two years, and what appeared on the pages of newspapers, particularly in the sports section, came to define my life, the highs and lows, and gave me personal and professional relationships with accomplished, brilliant journalists that have endured to this time of my life………….I enjoyed not only their craft and their ability to shape images and portraits of athletes, games and memorable events, but the heady rewards of seeing my suggested story lines or press release copy appear within those pages on occasion, outweighing the frustrations of whipping open the sports section only to see the dismissal and rejection of my efforts. During the 1991 Pan American Games in Havana, my day was going to be a good one only if the 100 copies of USA Today  had arrived at the Hotel Havana Libre thanks to a charter from Miami, a connection with “home” that balanced the other world experience we were having in that compelling environment, just three decades following the unforgettable experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis of my youth………….during the away from home Olympics where I worked for the USOC as its chief spokesman for a quarter century, my days were centered around obtaining coveted copies of the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and others, arriving sometimes three days late……….in Lake Placid in 1980, we were unaware of the magnitude of our hockey team’s Miracle On Ice because we were denied access to the major newspapers and gathered only faxed reproductions of some accounts of the game and its impact on our nation…………my world is quite different now, and I spend considerable time after breakfast gathering my sports and other relevant news from the internet, as do most younger Americans, too busy texting or Xboxing to read………with its dizzying array of websites, including those of the major newspapers, always on a seductive real-time basis..………..by the time I head to sleep each evening, I have read the baseball box scores, the game stories, even those sports columnists whose writing will appear in the print editions the next morning………..gone is the anticipation of the scores, the standings, the dramatic breaking news and opinion of the morning papers or the post-game reaction of the players……….sometimes I can see the immediate results of my flackery online, and in the morning, a quick recap of my sometimes used copy in various publications or broadcast sites via Google…………that same internet brings me each day the writings of journalists and columnists that I would otherwise not be able to enjoy with the paper in my hands………George Vecsey and William Rhoden of the New York Times, Christine Brennan of USA Today (who also is in big demand on various network TV news shows), Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, Philip Hersh of the Chicago Tribune, Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star and Fox Sports online, Selena Roberts and Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated, Alan Abrahamson of NBC’s sports website, among scores of writers……….and a long list of political pundits and poseurs that unduly influence our intellect and opinion………….and the hybrids, the new genre of sports Journalists/Entertainers who reap previously unthinkable salaries by straddling the stream of solid writing and celebrity status……….Mike Wilbon and Tony Kornhesier of Washington Post glories, Woody Paige of the Denver Post, Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News and Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe or the famed Peter Gammons of the Globe’s glory days..…………earlier this week, some Toronto sports columnist went off on the capable ESPN talent Erin Andrews for appearing on Dancing With The Stars, basically saying it was undignified for a “journalist” to participate in such a low-rent endeavor, and CBS Masters golf icon Jim Nantz apparently criticized Tiger Woods on some sports talk show, something he would never do on the network’s carefully constructed Augusta coverage……..so,what now is a “Journalist?”………….the definition remains “a person engaged in journalism, especially a writer or editor for a news medium and “Journalism?”……… “the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media, or the public press, and an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium.”………..I am confused, as many are, but this is our new world……….from screeching, confrontational cable sports show hyperbole to the provocative, stimulating writings by the shrinking lineup of notable sports columnists and reporters, we get it all………..not too many good newspaper jobs left now for the young men and women who comb college curriculum catalogs and dream of seeing their bylines and discourse in the pages of my morning papers…………whatever…….but it won’t alter my quixotic habit, nor erase the golden memories of my life so often created indelibly on newsprint that even today leaves a reverent smudge of ink on my fingers in my mornings.