I must give my friend Brian Robin credit for inspiring my feature on the Golf Channel last week. Brian, as you might recall from my earlier blogs on my debut as a golfer, handled PR for the tournament. He was helping me brainstorm some ideas Thursday evening for news features and mentioned the Golf Channel. My eyes just lit up. I knew that was a winner. The only question was could we pull it off Friday.

Sometimes when you’re dealing with a big company they often run you through an obstacle course that can take days to get access. Doesn’t make any sense, but that’s just how it is. I asked Brian to help grease the skids and he did. Imagine my surprise when I got an almost immediate response Friday morning. I called the producer when I got his number and he just told me they were in the parking lot of the Marriott — come on by. Wow.

So I did.

And they were incredibly professional. In fact, within minutes of being in there and observing the goings-on I was struck by how they manage to keep order amid all that chaos. It reminded me of the newsroom of any paper I ever worked at.

“We call the newspaper the daily miracle because it’s miraculous it gets out every day,” I told them.

They laughed as they nodded their heads. Somehow it manages to work.

There were a couple of moments I really appreciated: When associate director Chuck Whitfield told me he has worked for a lot of producers over the years, some who could be really stormy and preside over chaotic production trucks, but Producer Keith Hirshland was Mr. Cool. He demonstrated that minutes until they went live when features producer Elizabeth Wright asked him a question.

“Yes, my dear friend of nine years,” he said, smiling.

So when Hirshland and Whitfield e-mailed me over the weekend to compliment me on my article… well, let’s just say I forgot about that terrible head cold I was battling for a moment. In fact, Hirshland said a lot of reporters over the years have done that fly-on-the-wall piece I did but that he couldn’t remember a more comprehensive, interesting take on it.

Speaking of real pros, I’d be remiss in not mentioning the great work reporters Joe Serna and Brianna Bailey did last week. I picked up a lot of Toshiba coverage so they could do their work. And our crack copy desk helped pick up a lot of slack for me, too, especially on Friday. They all came through in the clutch during a hectic week. It really was the daily miracle every day last week!

Hope you enjoy the new header for the blog. Technical difficulties made it a long birth, but we got it done. It’s really only temporary, though. We’d like it if all the blogs had a more uniform look to them.

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