Canzano: Sailing a pirate ship into high seas

Readers aboard for the ride.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — I’m a pirate. This publication is my ship. I’ve sailed this independent writing endeavor to the other end of the country for the annual Associated Press Sports Editors convention.

JohnCanzano.com is not The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, or USA Today. But I sat at a table alongside a few of those cats at a luncheon on Friday, wishing I could have brought all my readers with me.

I’m here for the annual APSE convention. I’ve been asked to participate in a panel discussion on Saturday afternoon. I’ll attend the awards banquet later in the evening. A collection of my columns from 2023 won first place in the organization’s annual writing contest.

Over the years, I’ve won multiple APSE awards in a variety of writing categories (Enterprise, Investigative, Projects, Columns). But this one is different. It features work published exclusively at JohnCanzano.com.

I work for you now.

So the award belongs to you, too.

It was validating to have a 50-year-old entity — APSE — grant membership to this publication. A line of other independent sportswriting operations have since joined, including Marc Stein, Christian Caple, and Tyson Alger. I love that. And so does the APSE, which deserves credit for recognizing that a splinter group can be a viable part of the industry.

I didn’t get here without newspapers. I worked for six of them. I was graced with wonderful editors, and co-workers, and benefitted from what I learned on the beats for those institutions.

I walked into the office of The Gilroy Dispatch when I was in high school, asking why the editorial page didn’t include columns from younger writers. The executive editor humored me and asked me to send an example of what I might write. A week later, he called and offered to publish my column once a month and pay me $50.

The same editor — Mark Derry — hired me to work part-time when I was in community college at $8 an hour. I answered phones and wrote stories with the byline “STAFF REPORTS.” Occasionally, I’d play in a JUCO baseball game, then hustle to the office still in uniform and take a call from my coach. I was careful to write around the notion that I’d played in the game, never mentioning myself.

Six months after college graduation, the same small paper hired me full-time.

Annual salary: $17,000.

I worked 12-hour days and soaked up lessons. A year later The Santa Cruz Sentinel, a significantly larger newspaper, offered me a job at more than double the salary. I walked into Derry’s office to give him the news. His plea for me to stay amounted to: “Well, is money everything?”

Henry David Thoreau wrote once that he voyaged into the woods because he wanted to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Me? I packed a carry-on suitcase and wandered full-time into the world of newspapers. I’ve never come out of the woods.

I’ll be at the APSE convention in Charlotte, N.C. on Saturday. I’ll participate in a panel discussion. I’ll talk and learn from some folks who have been in this industry about as long as I’ve been alive. And I’ll pick up the writing award at Saturday evening’s banquet.

It means a lot to me that you’re here. From the beginning, I’ve promised you sourced, in-depth commentary and reporting that you can’t get anywhere else. Working for you works for me. I’m having fun and going where the stories take us.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about something the late Mike Leach — the biggest pirate in the sea — texted me when I informed him that I was venturing out alone.

Wrote Leach: “You unfiltered will be outstanding!”

Prior to the launch, my wife told me repeatedly: “This isn’t going to be good — it’s going to be GREAT.”

They were both right. It’s been a blast to work for you. But the other day, I asked my wife why she was so certain it would be successful.

She shot back: “I didn’t.”

Her smile said it all.

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The four columns that were part of the winning APSE entry:

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