Reporting from everywhere: Golfdom EIC highlights recent travels

By |  June 12, 2015 0 Comments

s_jonesMost people hate being summoned for jury duty. But after looking at the wall calendar I’m thinking I should send the Douglas County Court a thank-you note for giving me the two-week responsibility. I never had to report, but it did give me two successive weeks at home.

Since my jury duty timeframe ended I’ve been racking up the frequent flier miles. Georgia, Florida, Indiana, California, Wisconsin, North Carolina — at one point it was six trips in 5 weeks.

Georgia was mostly for the Masters, but also for a photo shoot and a demo of the Air2G2. Florida was for a product launch from Syngenta. Indiana was for a follow-up visit to Victoria National for this month’s cover story. California was for the National Golf Foundation’s annual Golf Business Symposium. North Carolina was to speak at Jacobsen’s Future Turf Managers meeting and play Carolina Golf Club. And Wisconsin was for, thankfully, more golf (Black Wolf Run and Whistling Straits) and a ballgame (Brewers versus Dodgers) as well as the TOCA awards (see page 26 for the results.)

During these recent trips it has become apparent to me that some Golfdom readers keep up with my travels. The magazine’s monthly Golfdom Gallery page, or Twitter 
(@Golfdom), or reading our blog and our twice-a-month e-newsletter, the Golfdom Insider, shows readers where I am each month. Which means that at most times our loyal readers are more in-tune with where I am than my own mother (sorry, Mom.)

The Golfdom Gallery page is decorated monthly with photos of beautiful golf courses (usually with me on them), as well as golf business luminaries (usually with me standing there with them, and somehow I always have a beer in my hand.) This page has given me a reputation (and not just for being a beer, uh, connoisseur.) I regularly have people tell me they want my job, and then they bring up Golfdom Gallery, where they saw a photo of me at this golf course or at that meeting.

It must be fun, they say, to “be everywhere.”

Something to keep in mind: the Golfdom Gallery page pays no attention to the man behind the curtain. You’ll never see a photo of the sketchy hotel room I stay in during Masters week, or of me dictating a photo caption from a moving bus, or of me stuck in an airport, waiting for a delayed (or missed) flight. Golfdom Gallery includes only what I want you to see.

I’m not writing this to get your sympathy or to tell you my job isn’t as great as it seems (because it’s better.)

I enjoy the travel, but I couldn’t do it without a great team behind me in the office and at home. In the office I’ve got a rock star team who keeps the magazine moving toward each deadline. Their names are listed on page 4. At home I’ve got my wife, Adrianne, who supports my career, and a mother-in-law, Judy, who lives nearby and helps Adrianne with the kids (Evelyn, 8, and Boyd, 3) when I’m away.

When people tell me they “want my job,” they don’t realize it but they’re really saying they “want my team.” My team is what enables me to do my job. And if they really wanted my job, they could have it — in this day of Internet bloggers, anyone can claim to be a reporter or journalist.

Hopefully they wouldn’t get as good of access as I get, or as good of stories, and hopefully you could tell the difference. But one thing I can definitely tell you: they could never have a team as good as mine.

Why? Because my team is the best.

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About the Author: Seth Jones

Seth Jones, a 18-year veteran of the golf industry media, is Editor-in-Chief of Golfdom magazine and Athletic Turf. A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Jones began working for Golf Course Management in 1999 as an intern. In his professional career he has won numerous awards, including a Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association (TOCA) first place general feature writing award for his profile of World Golf Hall of Famer Greg Norman and a TOCA first place photography award for his work covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In his career, Jones has accumulated an impressive list of interviews, including such names as George H.W. Bush, Samuel L. Jackson, Lance Armstrong and Charles Barkley. Jones has also done in-depth interviews with such golfing luminaries as Norman, Gary Player, Nick Price and Lorena Ochoa, to name only a few. Jones is a member of both the Golf Writers Association of America and the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association. Jones can be reached at sjones@northcoastmedia.net.


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