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bulldawgn
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Name: Brad
Country: United States
State: Georgia
Metro: Macon
Gender: Male
Interests: I'm a huge fan of NASCAR, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Atlanta Thrashers and sec football.
But with all that going on, I try to keep God first in all I do.
Expertise: Basically, I get paid to know a lot about sports, which overall is not a bad gig.
Occupation: Other
Industry: Media
Message: message me
AIM:  sgaleadfoot
Yahoo:  bharrison0311
Member Since:
9/3/2004
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Today
was rather frustrating as I watched Dale Jr's announcing that he's
leaving dei. Now, I could care less where he drives next year. He can
drive a cabbage patch kids buick for all I care. It's seeing on tv the
whole deal and a lot of the writers that I was right there with for the
media tour, daytona and atlanta and I wasn't there. I mean I want to be
covering nascar real bad, and I'm sure I'm stroking my ego here, but I
feel like I can do a real good job with it, I mean at some point, I
just want one full season on a nascar beat just to have a shot at the
deal, ya know?
However, it looks like for a while I'm in Macon
seeing as fewer papers have nascar guys today. And really, that's not
so much of a bad thing. I've got a good job, with a very good staff and
one thing I am proud of is how the local racing coverage has grown
since I've been here. Maybe I'll go full time one day, maybe not. For
now, the plan is to try and be the best at laying out pages and
covering local racing that I can do.
Otherwise, things are ok. I think I'm driving myself mad at work, maybe I need a vacation, which luckily is coming in June :). | | |
| I've always kinda been a nascar person when it comes to racing. Sure, I know other stuff is out there, but I never really got into it. That changed last Sunday when I covered the nhra race at Atlanta Dragway. I'll be honest it felt so much like how down to earth nascar once was at one time.
In the nhra, you get pit access if you buy a ticket. It was nice to see fans in the pit area not harassing drivers for pics and autographs like they owed them something or something like that. And unlike in nascar, you can go right up to the pit stalls as teams work on the cars....and what's more is that the drivers aren't too far away...they arent hiding in some motorhome compound halfway across the track. If you want access, go to an nhra race.
The drivers are personable as can be...no pr corporate mouthpieces here. Can you imagine how sponsors would react in cup if there was a john force personality who said what he thought and cared nothing about using four letter words while doing it? I mean what would a pr rep think if a driver used john force's quote that 'drag racing is a lot like sex at my age, it only for about 4 seconds.'
Within an hour of the driver intros sunday, I got a quick interview with the 2006 top fuel champion, tony schumacher.
As for a race itself, theres nothing like the ground rumbling, even if you are indoors, when two of those funny cars mash the gas from the start line before going 300 mph down the strip.
I'll be honest, after last weekend if given a choice, Id go to an nhra race than a nascar race.....but nascar is also up there too.
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| This week, some rather chilling news came out of Atlanta.
The Journal-Constitution, the South's largest newspaper, is making some changes that are just, downright senseless.
Recently, the paper announced putting more emphasis on web than actual print, meaning places in Fla, Bama or South Ga. where the paper once was circulated to- no more. The ironly is that the AJC slogan was once 'covering dixie like dew." so much for that.
Anyway, instead of having sports, news or features editors, theres an editor for breaking news, web, enterprise or features. Instead of sending your story to your section editor, youve got news editors handling it: not good for a sports of feature story.
Here's the kicker: at least 50 longtime employees have been offered buyouts, some of them being some of the best journalist at the paper. And there's more: numerous employees have to 'reapply' for their jobs. The sports editor is one of them, and he has left bc hes so fed up with having to reapply. Cant say I blame them. Folks are doing a good job, and theyre told to reapply. Kinda crappy if you ask me.
The scary part is that if something like this can happen in Atl, it can happen anywhere.
Also, the number of health reports has gone from 4 to 1 (good luck covering health issues in the same town thats home to the CDC with just one person). Here's what affects me though: In sports, to cut costs, the full time nascar and golf writing beats are eliminated.
The writers arent getting fired, but they wont be full time on their beat anymore. This has kinda shaken me up a bit, since that ajc nascar writer is a job ever since I wanted to cover nascar full time, I wanted. I guess its kinda woken me up to the fact that where I am now, I cover more racing than many dream of, even if it is 5-6 races a year and it might be time to be content with that since more papers are, sadely relying on wire services to racing coverage.
Other than that, things are ok. Im busy with work and my other blog
I'm finally getting my summer set, which is a slow time at work, which means vacation time! Im prob gonna help out Ron Young, the busch driver help with PR stuff when I can, this summer...theres a good chance Ill ride with them to Gateway and Nashville....so if that works out, Ill get my racing fix then.
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| Tuesday at work, someone's like, im Brad, there's a call for you, someone from NASCAR wants to talk to you.
So of course, my first thought is, oh no, I pissed off NASCAR.
Luckily, it was one of the guys who handles PR for the truck series seeing if I wanted to talk to Rick Crawford, so it was all good.
Other than that, I'm just real busy with work these days, including with a racing blog http://nascarmacon.blogspot.com
Add to it that Atlanta is next weekend, and it's pretty lively around here.
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| Well, it was a heck of a week, that's for dad-gum sure. This past week,
I was sent to Concord to cover The NASCAR Nextel Cup Preseason Media
Tour hosted by Lowe's Motor Speedway (just in case any of the fine PR
folks at LMS are reading). It was my first one, and I hope that it's
the first of many.
It's odd...I moved to Lumberton, NC in 2004
thinking Id get into covering racing...but its a move back to Georgia
that got me into it. This past week honestly felt like living a dream
and I cant wait for Daytona.
Basically, it's the racing version
of the college media days. It's four days of going to or either going
to press sessions of all the teams in the nextel cup series. I know
that some people think 'all you're doing is talking to drivers and
getting to meet them all week' but its so much more than that. Its
getting further ingrained in covering racing, getting more experience
doing it, making more contacts with the media covering nascar and being
visible in the nascar community.
The biggest thing is getting info for all the preseason stuff we need for our racing preview section.
In
a way, I felt out of place. Here I am, 26 years old and there are
others there who've been doing this for years in their 40s and 50s. In
fact, one racing journalist I talked to a good bit up there has been
doing every media tour since it began in the early 1980s.
anyway, here's a rundown on the week, for those interested.
Monday:
after
talking to Ginn Racing, the team of Martin, Marlin and others, it was
off nascar announcing its changes to the chase and then to Chip Ganassi
Racing where all the focus was solely on Juan Pablo Montoya with Reed
Sorenson and David Stremme being 'the other guys' there.
JPM
will be a gold mine for nascar. He will do well in that 42 car. When he
does, nascar's diversity effort folks will be going nuts.
an
interesting sight at CGR: Montoya interviewed by a colombian tv
crew...in spanish. of course, no regular nascar writers understood what
was being said.
Tuesday was a look back into nascar history and
its glory years. first was a stop at RCR. Dale Sr. may be gone, but his
name and accomplishments are still all over the place there.
We
get lots of free stuff at the media tour stops (I came home with two
lap tops bags and three duffel bags for starters) and RCR's giving out
of bottles of wine to media was a favorite. Let's just saw many had a
little more spring in their step when we arrived at Petty Enterprises.
At
Petty, it was a feeling of going back to a Fenway Park or Lambeau
Field. You go from all these spiffy shops to Petty, a place off the
beaten path with shops looking like the ones that were around 20 years
ago. But it was a lot of fun for me personally there, because I got to
talk to The King himself, Richard Petty. He was a good as they come,
answering every question like it was no problem at all.
That
night, it was dinner with DEI, whose setting up the interview of the
drivers on the stage and not allowing one on ones rubbed a lot of the
media raw. And you wonder why DEI has problems....
Later, we saw
a preview of the Dale Earnhardt movie...and folks, its awesome with a
capital A even if you didnt like Dale Sr. I actually cried a little
during it....something I dont recall doing in a theater.
Wednesday
was day of champions. After hearing Jack Roush sound like the Japs were
invading us next Tuesday when discussing Toyota's entry into the sport,
it was off to Hendrick where in a nice gesture, a donation to the
American Cancer Society was made in lieu of media gifts.
One
thing on Roush vs. Toyota...his concern is that toyota will try to hire
his people and make him pay people more. That's ironic...one of the
best funded teams who gets sponsors for Busch cars that could double as
smaller cup sponsors complaining about costs. Fact is, Roush doesn't
want to spend more money.
Later it was a press deal with the
Gibbs teams and that night a visit and tour of the Penske Shop...given
by none other than Roger Penske. He was also there to personally shake
everyone's hand, including yours truly.
Thursday, the final day,
it was an interview with the always entertaining Bruton Smith, owner of
SMI. After a visit to Haas Racing followed by the nascar Hall of Fame
groundbreaking, it was back home, but not before getting Becky (my
wife) some souveniers from Roush and visiting with someone off the old
Casey Atwood message board that I was part of many moons and eons ago.
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