Commentary

Sports insights yet to come

Richard Ross to launch new website; TRR will feature salient photos and stories

By RICHARD A. ROSS

NARROWSBURG, NY — “Life is change. How it differs from the rocks,” sang Jefferson Airplane on their album Crown of Creation. And so, after seven years of being The River Reporter’s one-man sports department, I am joining the Class of 2009 to celebrate a commencement of my own, one that I hope will lead to an even brighter future for myself, my loyal readers and photo mavens and the newspaper that has afforded me such a remarkable opportunity to rediscover myself after 35 years of teaching.

About the middle of August, I plan to launch a website (sportsinsightsny.com that will house daily articles, blogs, photos and a store to market the kind of up close and personal remembrances of great local athletics with the same rigor and attention that has defined my work at The River Reporter and on rivereportersports.com.

People will still see me roaming the sidelines, courtside and on the courses at an uncanny number of games, meets, matches etc, find my work weekly in The River Reporter, be able to go online to read stories with my slant and see/buy photos and ancillary gifts such as mugs, t-shirts, calendars, posters, wall paste ons, ala “fat heads” etc. I will still doing slide presentations in the school districts that people tell me they look forward to seeing at the end of seasons.

The difference is now I am embarking on a personal enterprise in an attempt to make my livelihood more independently, doing the kind of work that has led to being named a Sportswriter of the Year by the New York Press Association and numerous awards, accolades and the appreciation of kids and parents throughout the region.

To that end, I fervently hope that people will support me in this venture. Praise has always been in no short supply but now to put two kids through college, I’ll need more than just words of thanks. While virtually everyone has a digital camera these days, they lack the access and high-end equipment that deliver the kind of photos people have come to expect from my work.

While the amount of coverage in The River Reporter will be less comprehensive than before, each week readers will find some of my best and will be pointed to the new website that will house the archives of riverreportersports.com with its rich sports history and links to photo albums that reside there. To put it another way, while I am becoming an independent entity, I am fostering a new partnership with The River Reporter and Stuart Communications Creative Services that will lead to other joint ventures in the future.

Discussions with The River Reporter about the specifics of those kinds of projects are ongoing. I continue and will continue to contribute to Sullivan County’s finest newspaper. I am orchestrating a change that will afford me even greater independence in what will be my third work incarnation.

Devoting the same passion and fervor as I did to teaching and my newspaper career to become sports entrepreneur means transferring my great energy to this new endeavor, while using all I have learned from my prior two careers.

In the interim between now and the onset of the fall sports season that begins with the requisite mid-August practices and scrimmages, I plan to be on a much-needed vacation. Thus, my absence from softball games, baseball leagues, road races and other summer fare while I swim, spend time with my family, mow the grass that laughingly grows while I write this and continue to make the rounds at graduation parties where I celebrate accomplishments of the past and promise for the future for my beloved friends and, by extension, for myself.

Feel free to e-mail me with your thoughts at richardross@riverreporter.com and stay posted for the launch of sportsinsightsny.com.