ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW

National Newspaper Week is being marked Oct. 6-12 this year. 2024 marks the 84th celebration of National Newspaper Week. Since 1940, Newspaper Association Managers has sponsored and supported National Newspaper Week, a week-long promotion of the newspaper industry in the United States and Canada. The theme this year is "Telling Our Stories." Everyone has a story about how they got into the industry. Here is Cole's story.

Briefly explain your role:

As sports editor, I get a front-row ticket to every high school sports game from Bay Minette to the beach. I'm able to not only take readers in the locker room and behind the scenes of the big plays in the arena but also tell the stories of the people who made those big moments happen.

Why did you get into this industry?

I wasn't good enough to keep playing sports myself and writing always came easier to me than math or science so I put sports and writing together to become a sportswriter.

What's your newspaper/journalism journey to today?

Wrote for The Scarlet Letter at Milford High School before becoming editor-in-chief of The Currier Times at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. I started covering high school sports for The Boston Globe my last two years of college and that helped me earn my first fulltime job as sports editor of The Sealy News in Texas. After being elevated to managing editor, I wanted to get back to strictly sports and found this gem on the beaches of Alabama.

A front-row ticket to every high school game, from Bay Minette to the beach, offers sports editor Cole McNanna up-close look at the action on the …

What's something you've learned in the process?

I got an up-close look at the printing press and got to meet everyone along the assembly line and learned how many different hands make a newspaper.

How has working at a newspaper changed you?

Whenever big things happen in the sports world, my immediate reaction is, "How do I localize this?"

What's something you wish more people knew about your role or newspapers in general?

We care about the communities we work in just as much as the people that live there. Newspapers certainly weren't what they used to be but there's still a need for the historian and the recordholder to put things in perspective on the ledger. We're doing that in adaptive ways to still serve our community and provide reliable information everyone can use.

What's something completely non-newspaper related about yourself?

My escape from reality is video games but I still only mainly play sports video games so even when I relax, sports are probably still involved somehow.