GOOD LUCK!
Your gonna need it!
Those liberal pinheads at the HT hate racing!
They are convinced the Bloomington Speedway is THE cause for global warming!:kookoo

If it ain't IU or have doesn't a ball involved, it ain't a sport to them!:headbang

I go on-line on Mondays and read their sister paper in Bedford and it has FANTASTIC local racing coverage!
All they have to do is print that!
But they don't and they won't, it is too barbaric for the sophisticated readers in Bloomington! :kookoo

Good luck Chris with the liberal bastion that is the H/T. Hopefully you can make progress with it!

They have given me the job. So we will see what they print..lol

Don't forget to throw a line or two in your article about the SPRINT CARS...Just kidding Chris, I couldn't resist.

Thats the main part of the article Pine

Congrats and good luck with your new position, Chris!:applaud::thumb

Me too!! Being in a college town we don't get much racing news at all.

Congrats buddy!

Congratulations, Chris! I live in Bloomington and I am a new spectator to racing. By reading SprintCar & Midget magazine and many web pages I have learned a lot about drivers, cars and other tracks but I am still embarrassingly ignorant. I lived here for a couple of years before I went to my first race. The only thing I knew about Bloomington Speedway was that my back yard was noisy every Friday night but now I try to go every week. None of my neighbors have ever been and look at me strangely when I ask them if they would be interested in going. I hope you can write some eye catching articles that will create some interest. I would like to see some coverage of Bloomington natives when they go to other tracks and how about some coverage of Bloomington natives like the Kinsers and of course some technical info that would teach me something about the cars, drivers and history of the track. I'll send the HT some good comments and it would be nice if some advertisers would do the same.

Congratulations Chris. Good Luck.
If you are going to pitch more coverage for racing, having a new advertiser or two could help. Money that the paper does not already have, rather than reallocating the ad budget that someone is already spending.

I've found most local sports editors in the "regular media" do not cover racing for two basic reasons -- they know nothing about it (surprisingly some do know some); and they are already working more hours than anyone would even begin to think about. They can't get to the race track even if they want to -- after covering all of the meets for boys and girls, high school, junior high, little league, Babe Ruth League, golf, tennis, track, soccer, wrestling, basketball. Oh yeah, Bowling is a sport also.

Well, you get the idea. And, we have not even to COLLEGE sports yet. All while trying to balance a "personal life" with maybe a wife and kids they like to see once in a while.

Trust me. I've been there. It's a lot tougher than you think. Most papers, even Bloomington, have a relatively small sports staff for the job needing to be done. I've known sports editors who were glad when the local team LOST in the high school tournament because that meant they got a weekend off.

A third reason is the sports editors and writers do not allocate how much space they have, normally. That is determined by the advertising department. When the space is gone, things get left out. Tough choices are made when the pressroom is demanding the final sports pages so they can get it to your homes and businesses on time.

One thing most racers could do is to stop by the newspaper office or the radio and television station, introduce yourself to the sports editor. Become a nice guy person the he, or she, can like rather than being a headache. See what YOU can do to help HIM (OR HER). When I was a newspaper editor, people who did this -- helped me out -- had a much greater chance of getting something published than those just whining about it. Often, I wanted to get things covered, but just ran out of time.

One important thing, before stopping by the sport's editor's office, find out when he is on deadline for producing that day's edition and avoid that time.

Again, Chris. Good luck. Many of us racing writers started out that way. With me, it led to a newspaper career that lasted more than two decades before I burned out on the daily grind. I used to think of it as running on a high speed treadmill on which the off switch was broken.

Jim Morrison

Jen gimmie a break Sheeesh haha