Garry Howard doesn't see much difference in the position he has now and the challenge he will begin on Jan. 3.
Howard, the assistant managing editor for sports at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, will become editor in chief at the Sporting News shortly after the new year, jumping from a metropolitan daily newspaper to a brand once known as the "Bible of Baseball," but now offering a comprehensive digital daily edition.
"It's a situation where you're still printing things and you're also online, almost like what sports editors are doing right now," Howard said. "I've put out a newspaper for the last 20 years but for the last 10 years, I've also worked heavily on the Web side of it.
"One of the things that was most appealing is that Sporting News Today is a newspaper on steroids. It's full color, there's enough space, there's a great deadline to get everything in there, even the late games from the West Coast. Everything that happened the night before is in there."
Sporting News Today, launched in 2008 as a free distribution but now available through subscriptions, publishes 50-plus pages each day and is delivered via e-mail or available through computers, iPads and smart phones. It has a 3 a.m. Eastern time deadline and is delivered by 6 a.m."It's very much like the job I'm doing," Howard said, "but obviously you get to do a little more from a creative standpoint because it's a full-color magazine on digital, and I was very excited about that."
Howard's hiring was announced earlier this month, with president and publisher Jeff Price saying, "We are incredibly excited to have such an accomplished and uniquely qualified journalist and editor such as Garry Howard joining Sporting News at this critical time in our history."
Howard will oversee content across all Sporting News platforms, including the iconic magazine founded in 1886 that now publishes bi-weekly; the website, SportingNews.com; and about a dozen yearbooks on professional and major college sports.
"I think you're looking at an iconic brand that has lost a bit of its relevance over the years, but I think under the new ownership of American City Business Journals, we're making a strong run at coming back," Howard said. "I believe you become relevant by breaking stories, by being a go-to place for sporting news 24 hours a day in a seven-day cycle, and that's what I expect to do when I get there. I think bringing me along in a leadership position will motivate a lot of our managing editors and platform editors and topic editors and our writers."
Motivation is one of Howard's strong suits, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editor and senior vice president Marty Kaiser saw it in how Howard conducted himself in 15-plus years in Milwaukee, first with the Journal and then the combined Journal Sentinel sports department.
"The energy he brings to the community, the energy he brings to the staff and to his own work," Kaiser said. "He's a real leader. He goes beyond being a sports editor, and he has the title managing editor because of the presence he brings to the newsroom. I value his opinion in so many areas."
Kaiser, in his memo to the staff about Howard's departure, told a story about Howard's first night in Milwaukee, before he had spent his first day in the Journal newsroom. Howard spoke at the paper's annual high school basketball awards dinner and captivated the crowd.
"He could have done it all by just telling them about his own college career or sharing first-hand stories about basketball greats such as Michael Jordan," Kaiser wrote. "Sure, he talked about basketball, but the real message of the night was the importance of education. He did this by sharing his own life story with a genuineness that his young audience could relate to.
"I have been to many high school sports banquets, but I have never seen teenagers, with dreams of basketball greatness in their eyes, as absorbed by a speaker. Education suddenly became more important than basketball."
Howard, who graduated from Lehigh University in 1982, worked at the Trenton (N.J.) Times, The Home News of New Brunswick, N.J.; the Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union; the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Independent and then the Times before joining the Philadelphia Inquirer as a sports copy editor in 1987. He was deputy sports editor at the Inquirer in 1994 when he was hired by Kaiser at the Milwaukee Journal as executive sports editor, becoming the only African-American sports editor at a major metropolitan daily newspaper at the time.
When the Journal merged with the Milwaukee Sentinel in April 1995, Howard was named senior editor of the combined sports department. He was promoted to AME for sports in 2000.
He was president of Associated Press Sports Editors from June 2009 to June 2010, presiding over the opening of the organization's Red Smith Hall of Fame at Indiana University's National Sports Journalism Center on the campus of IUPUI.
He also received the 2009 Sam Lacy Pioneer Award by the National Association of Black Journalists' Sports Task Force for his commitment to the field of sports journalism.
The Journal Sentinel this year was a top 10 APSE contest winner in daily and Sunday section divisions for the 100,000-250,000 circulation category. The paper also had three top-10s in writing divisions.
In addition, the paper's website was judged to have two of the top four sports blogs in the nation, as Editor & Publisher gave the EPpy award to the Packers Blog. The Brewers Blog also was a finalist.
"A lot of things I've been able to do here in the last five years at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will serve me well in my new job," Howard said.
Howard said highlights of his time in Milwaukee included coordinating coverage of the Packers' Super Bowl runs in 1996 and 1997, and the PGA Championship tournaments of 2004 and 2010.
"We were able to send more than 30 people to the Super Bowl, and we covered it in every way, shape, fashion," he said. "We were able to tackle big-time events and cover them in a big-time fashion, and I was very happy about what my staff was able to produce.
"Bill Windler is a wonderful sports editor, and he's worked hand in hand with me, and we've been able to work together to make sure the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is looked upon as one of the best sports sections in the country."
Still, Howard has been a lightning rod in the industry.
"I think the things that we have managed to produce, I don't think people know about and they don't take time to investigate it," Howard said.
"I've always developed most of my writers," he added. "Greg Bedard, I hired four years ago and brought him in to be my Packers (online) beat writer, and he just left for the Boston Globe. My sports designer (Sam Manchester) was just hired by the New York Times as the sports designer. Gary D'Amato is one of the best golf writers in the country, Tom Haudricourt is one of the best baseball writers in this country, and Bob McGinn is arguably the best NFL writer in the country.
"I think if you look at that and what we've been able to produce, I take a lot of pride in helping people develop."
Kaiser said Howard's personality is different than many journalists, which could lead to the criticism.
"A lot of journalists can be pretty quiet," Kaiser said. "I think, sure, he puts a lot of himself out there. You see the real Garry Howard. He is capable of doing a lot of things, and he's been a mentor to so many journalists. And he's not afraid to stand up for the profession."
Kaiser, who was sports editor of the Chicago Sun-Times at one point, said his own background in sports was both a curse and a blessing for Howard.
"He got resources," Kaiser said, "but then he was held accountable because I knew. … I'd made all the mistakes myself.
"He was held to a high standard, and he reached it. … I'm going to miss him."
