A change has come to the pages of The Post-Star and the greater Glens Falls community.
Longtime sports editor Greg Brownell has just retired after more than four decades, covering everything from AHL hockey to high school sports to semi-pro football.
Brownell wrote on social media that he’s excited for retirement, but he would still trade places with the 22-year-old kid walking into the newsroom for the first time in 1981. WAMC's Jim Levulis spoke with Brownell about his career and what's next.
Levulis: So Greg, how did you start at The Post-Star?
Brownell: It was the summer after I graduated from Plattsburgh State. And I had, like most people did at that time, flooded the mail with resumes. And the job came open here sometime late in the summer. And I interviewed and took the job on the spot. And I guess the rest is history as they say.
We mentioned your length at The Post-Star. You are one of the longest-tenured journalists in the newspaper’s history. So what kept you there all these years?
It was always an interesting job. There were always new things coming up over time. I started out covering high schools then went to covering the double A baseball team we had here at the time of Glens Falls White Sox, which to a kid growing up as a baseball fan was just a dream job to be able to cover professional baseball. And then on to cover the Adirondack Redwings of the AHL. And then the sports editor job opened up and over the years, that job changed pretty consistently. Every few years, we were doing something new and different. So it's not like I've been doing the same thing for 42 years, it's really been a challenge to sort of keep up with the technology and all the changes in media that have happened out there. And I always felt challenged in the job.
You mentioned it right there. But the industry certainly has changed quite a bit since you started out. What are your thoughts about the future of the kind of work that you've done?
Well, I think it'll still be out there, newspapers that is. It's just going to continue to evolve into something that will work financially. It used to be, I mean back in the 80s, running a newspaper was considered a license to print money. And I don't know what the profit margin was here, but we always thought it was pretty good. But today, there are just so many more options for the consumer out there, from cable television, to internet sites, to mobile to whatever. And I think, you know, newspapers have had to adjust to that. And we've gone to three days a week up here, the Post-Star has, which is sort of a new format that's being tried across the country by many newspapers, with a greater emphasis toward the internet, because that's just where more customers are coming from these days. And I think that'll continue. I don't think print is going to become more frequent. I think it's going to be more of an effort to try and get to readers where they are which is on your phone or on your laptop.
Now you've spent more than four decades writing the sports highlights, the sports stories of the Glens Falls community. For you, do you have a highlight, a top story?
So many great things happened. Remember the last 24 years as that sports editor I tried not to take the big events for myself, I usually sent the writers out there to do it. Which I think is one of the reasons why we were able to get such good writers. I mean, the Adirondack Red Wings won two Calder Cups while I was here, and that was certainly a privilege to be a part of. I watched several teams win high school state championships. And you know, watching Jimmer Fredette and Joe Girard come up through the system, albeit from a distance often, was a phenomenon. The thing about those two guys was high school sports tends, you tend to care to what's happening in your sport, or in your town. And that's an instance where we would get calls from all over asking many did Jimmer score last night? Or where does he play next, and people would be showing up to these games that had no connection to the high school team whatsoever, and that's something you just don't find in high school sports.
Now, we'll note for our listeners here that you planed this interview around watching the Women's World Cup. So, are you ready to be a sports fan in retirement as opposed to someone reporting on sports? Are you prepared for that?
Definitely. I mean, the problem with being in sports and newspapers is you work at night. So the game is on the TV, but it's just kind of on in the corner there with the sound down. It's only on a day off that I can enjoy watching the Yankees or whatever. And the advantage of the World Cup is it played out hours so I have been able to watch that. But of course I couldn't stay up for the 6 a.m. games. But that's an option that probably wouldn't have been there if I was still working. But you know, I definitely plan to watch more sports and travel to more games and I guess have a little bit more fun in my life.
