By BRIAN REED-BAIOTTO, Sports Editor It was some time in 2008, and I was making the 40-mile or so drive from Glendora to Long Beach to cover prep sports for the primary newspaper out that way. I had the wrestling and baseball beat to myself, but also covered every sport there was. The people out […]
By BRIAN REED-BAIOTTO, Sports Editor
It was some time in 2008, and I was making the 40-mile or so drive from Glendora to Long Beach to cover prep sports for the primary newspaper out that way.
I had the wrestling and baseball beat to myself, but also covered every sport there was.
The people out there that got to know me were almost all positive, polite and appreciative of any coverage their sons or daughters got from that paper and myself.
I even got to choose the ‘Dream Team’ for baseball and wrestling, which is the athlete of the year for their respective sports and it was a big deal.
It was obvious that some people were kind because they wanted positive coverage for their kid, but the great majority were and are just good people and they knew I was doing the best I could, and within the limitations of what the paper could afford or would allow.
By that, I mean how many games a week you could cover based on their budget for both space (in inches) and money (to pay us per story).
It was nowhere near what I wanted and I knew it wasn’t as often as readers or parents would have liked.
During that time, I had the privilege of meeting two young reporters that shared the same passion for high school sports, the schools they covered and the kids/parents they watched and reported on.
Their names are JJ Fiddler and Mike Guardabascio and they ran an online site that covered the Moore League.
Those teams were in or near Long Beach, and they included Lakewood, Long Beach Poly, Long Beach Wilson, Millikan, Compton, Cabrillo and Jordan.
Mike and JJ were both be at multiple games daily and from and a number of sports.
They didn’t care if you were in last place or the best team in the league.
If you played a sport, and went to any of those 7 schools, they cared, and you mattered.
They were so ahead of their time in that they realized the power of video and the highlights of those videos.
Anyone can write a story, but there were and still are a limited amount of sites that do in depth videos of an event, and that were accompanied by a written story as well.
Their highlights were the talk of the town and social media because JJ captured incredible clips and from all different angles and Mike did all he could to match the video with stories.
Any time I was at Blair Field (where Long Beach State and the Moore League baseball teams play) to cover a game, people treated them in many cases like celebrities or royalty.
It wasn’t because they are or were famous or royalty.
It was because they were everywhere and supported a city they love with several stories a night in many sports and with passion and depth.
I remember wondering why a lot of their stories didn’t post until really late that night/early the next morning.
But I’ll get back to that in a second.
I knew back then they were far ahead of the curve, but never saw myself adapting to that form of sports coverage.
Nearly 10 years later, and because of seeing how well they did their jobs, the reactions and appreciation they got from the people of Long Beach, I pitched the idea to the Publisher of Pasadena Now, a site that has a combined viewer base of over 100,000 on all social media sites.
Although I was a veteran by the time I met them, they taught me so much just by watching the way they dedicated their lives to giving those hard-working athletes, the programs and the schools the coverage they craved and deserved.
And better yet, they gave kids and programs that struggle the same respect and coverage that print newspapers would never touch.
I convinced a man that is now my boss, and by using the blueprint of Mike and JJ’s site that it is workable and could be something big.
After a few minutes, he reached out to advertising and then called me back within the hour and said ‘let’s give this a go, and let’s start now.’
I have my job and this site is thriving covering high schools in Pasadena and three in La Canada, because of the brilliance in which Mike and JJ paved a path for me and many to come.
Because of their popularity and success, the same newspaper I wrote for in the past hired them both to run the prep coverage, and they did a great job.
Mike did most of the writing and JJ did the videos and they were great tag-team partners.
Several years later, it’s January 25, 2018, and Mike and JJ both got their pink slips due to a failing entity and the difficulty it is to get advertisers not just to purchase ads, but to do so for a medium (print newspapers) that is a dying breed, because of the success of Internet sites to garner the ad buys.
The news doesn’t fully affect the Pasadena area, but in ways, it very much does.
And it affects me greatly, because these are two great guys who literally gave a decade or more of their lives giving graduating class after graduating class memories in print they’ll save for a lifetime.
It’s a disgrace to cut jobs of those who produce and that people want to read, but the nature of the changing times made their jobs become expendable.
The worst part is, and they would never say this, it’s decisions made by others who helped bring us to this day, not anything Mike or JJ failed to do.
But back to the topic of wondering why it took them until 3 a.m. on many nights when a game might have ended at 6 p.m.
Ten years later, I fully understand it.
It’s because I am doing what they did before me, and with all humility, I’d like to think I share their passion for the kids of Pasadena.
And on any given night, I am hours and hours past midnight writing stories and making sure each story is as complete as I can make it by adding standings, stats, who a team plays next and so on.
In fact, I get emails after 1 a.m. almost nightly, and make sure before I go to bed that every coach or athletic director or team mom who sends me stats/info/pictures gets my best effort.
I am doing what I’m doing and I’m as passionate as I am covering the great city of Pasadena because of Mike and JJ and what they did before me and how well they did it.
These are two young men in their 30’s, they have families and they are out of work because of the slow but certain death of the newspaper business, at least in the print version.
If there is just one thing you get from reading this article, we hope that it’s just how appreciative we are to Mike and JJ for paving a path for myself and so many to come.
And that is just how thankful and appreciate that I am to Mike Guardabascio and JJ Fiddler paved a path and a smooth one at that.
The greatest compliment I could give them is my humble boss, who told me no, no and no until the fourth time, and after giving a vision of what Mike and JJ did, he said yes.
And furthermore, to his credit, he told me months later, after getting emails thanking him for the sports site that now accompanies his beloved news site, “I’ve never been more happy to be wrong about something I thought couldn’t and wouldn’t work.”
The people of Long Beach love and will miss these two quality men, as will I.
But so will sports coverage in general.
If they choose to remain in this business somewhere else, anyone that might hire them would be doing their viewers the greatest service they possibly could.
Until businesses realize that thousands of people from all areas read quality sites with good high school sports, especially local coverage and that it is a fiscally prudent decision to advertise, the dominos will continue to fall, and just as sad, the coverage will become extinct.
Thank you, Mike and JJ, for all you did for Long Beach, for myself and the future of prep sports coverage.
Although, I am a proud resident of the SGV, it felt great to be an honorary member of the community you both love when I poured all I could into my coverage your way.
You will be great at whatever you choose to do next and you know your buddy from the 91741 is behind you every step of the way.
