The Daily Times

I’ve never been a fan of goodbye columns, but I’ve read that closure is a good thing, so it’s time to write one to all of you with whom I’ve been in contact — through good and bad times — over the past 19 years as a member of The Daily Times staff.

By this time next week, I will no longer be sports editor or an employee of this newspaper, but the decision to leave after nearly two decades was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

What I’ve noticed over a long period of time, first as a teacher and now as a journalist, is that we seem to have a kind of internal clock about the work we choose to do. At some point, it says the time has come to move on to something new, even if we choose to ignore it.

The other part of this decision is less collective and more personal. Long ago when I was a journalism major, I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to be a newspaper editor. The fun, it seemed to me then (and still does now) is in going into the field, talking to people and conveying in print as best you can what you saw and heard and sometimes felt.

After years of resisting the idea that writing less and editing more was a form of upward mobility, I accepted the position of sports editor at The Daily Times. Although the job has seemed to be mainly about keeping everyone — readers, players, fans, my own writers and management — happy, the experience has given me insights that I did not have when I was a columnist and reporter.

So the only regret I have in becoming an editor is that I haven’t had as much contact with all of you as I would have liked over the past four years. On the other hand, I haven’t heard very many complaints from you either, and as the saying goes, no news is good news, especially when the voice mail is empty and the email contains only spam.

My aim in taking this job at a time when cuts in staff and funding were affecting our newspaper — and all newspapers across the country — was to make our high school sports coverage more far-reaching than it ever had been. For a small community such as ours still to have a newspaper it can call its own is a rarity these days, so its content should mirror that community in as many ways as possible given the available resources, and I hope we have done that.

As I close out my small part of the long history of The Daily Times, I wish all of you well and hope for the success of all of our teams and athletes, both in the classroom and on the field and court.

And don’t be surprised if I show up now and again as a freelancer myself, pad and pen in hand, trying to recreate a little bit of Blount County in print. One thing I’ve learned over the years is never to say never, even when you say it’s time to move on.

Leonard Butts is sports editor. Write to him at The Daily Times, P.O. Box 9740, Maryville, TN 37802, or e-mail him at (leonard.butts@thedailytimes.com)

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