Zietlow: Thoughts on sportswriting, Barry Byers and what I’ve learned in my 13 months
“Football died a little bit Friday.”
On Thursday, I had a moment to parse through some boxes I’d found of old newspaper clippings and pictures, and I came across the front page of the Saturday, Oct. 19, 2013 edition of The Herald for the first time. That line — “football died a little bit Friday” — was written by my former desk buddy and longtime gifted storyteller Andrew Dys, and his words wrapped around a portrait on the page of a smiling, gray-bearded Barry Byers, the paper’s late, beloved sports editor, who’d passed away the day before that story ran.
“Not the game. The game marched on,” Dys wrote. “Not the lights. The lights turned on. But what people know about high school football in Rock Hill — and a lot of other places, too, after reading The Herald — lost a little bit of something.”
This last time I looked through these boxes, I found old Winthrop basketball media guides. (Practices in digital media and graphic design have come a long way, let me tell you.) I found certificates for high school athletes, similar to the ones I’ll give out next week. There were CD’s (?), old-fashioned tape recorders, coffee-stained self-evaluations, portraits of a young Jadeveon Clowney in sweat-shorts and columns from Mr. Byers himself, including one that had the headline, “This soccer thing isn’t so bad.”
For 13 months and counting, I’ve been here at The Herald. And every week, I’ve been inspired, or filled with pride, or at least have found a good story to tell: I’ve seen a football team and a coach lean on each other after their own devastating losses. I’ve seen history made. I’ve seen history repeated. There’ve been little moments, too, that still give me goosebumps, like when Clover quarterback Gabe Carroll told reporters after his last high school football game through tears how lucky he was that coach Brian Lane treated him as if he was his own son, or when a Rock Hill wrestler hung tough in the match of his life, and then, like a movie script was being played out, his coach’s voice cut through the noise in the loud gym: “Are you believing yet?!” (The kid in me, who perhaps too often mistakes athletes and coaches for heroes, wanted to respond, “Yes, Coach, I am!”)
But also, in my 13 months, there’ve been days when I’ve leaned back into my office chair, my eyes tired from staring at a screen and my hair greasy, and I’ve asked myself the elephant-in-the-room question: What’s the future of local journalism?
Thursday, after reading a newspaper clipping from almost seven years ago now that I’d found by rummaging through boxes of The Herald’s history, I had one of those days. I couldn’t help it. The front page, along with Dys’ column, had a large picture of football players in District Three Stadium bowing their heads in silence for Mr. Byers, the friend and sunflower seed lover and family man and sportswriter I’ve heard so much about.
Don’t get it twisted: I know I’m fresh out of college, and I haven’t seen much. I also know that anyone who cares about the future of local journalism has a discussion like this at least once a week — either in their own heads, or with their coworkers over $1 slices of pizza and $1 Miller High Life’s. I take comfort in the fact that while smarter people spend their entire jobs trying to answer that question, I get to talk to kids about something they’re excited to tell me about, and that people in their communities are excited to read about.
I also take comfort in the fact that Rock Hill and all the other municipalities in York County and Chester County and Lancaster County are booming with news — of college basketball bubbles at Winthrop, of the Panthers coming south of the Carolinas border, of soon-to-be added high schools because of population growth.
Plus, I’m following in the footsteps of Bret McCormick, one of the best to ever write about local sports — (he, too, was inspired by Mr. Byers) — and I’ve read so much of his stuff that I think I sort of know what I’m doing now.
Still — even though it’s no secret that local journalism is uniquely equipped to hold local institutions (the ones that affect you the most!) accountable, and that writing enriches life and fortifies communities like nothing else can — the question sometimes makes my stomach turn.
To deal with that, I’ve learned to try and find a balance: I’ve learned that I can’t be consumed by things I can’t control, but that I also can’t lose sight of what I’m doing, and who I’m doing it for.
OK, I should go. This’ll run on Sunday, but I’m writing on Friday afternoon and the sun is about to set, and I’m running late to the field. We’ll talk more about heroes and stuff more interesting than this the next time, but I just wanted to let you, the reader, know that I think about this sort of thing all the time, and I care about this newspaper, and this job, immensely — just like my colleagues here at The Herald do.
Just like Mr. Byers did, according to Dys’ words from Oct. 19, 2013:
“Barry wrote about the players who would play college and pro sports, and the players who would never play another down or inning or second half in their lives. Byers wrote stories about fans. And he did it all so that the people who read about football and all sports knew that he loved it just as much. ...”
This story was originally published October 4, 2020 at 5:04 AM.
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