Editor’s note: The Fort Worth Business Press is now offering selected stories from the new sports website PressBoxDFW.com as part of our daily online newsletters. In the following article, longtime Fort Worth sports columnist and PressBox DFW co-founder Gil LeBreton discusses the website, its goals and how it got started.
When I walked away from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in July 2017, I wasn’t ready to stop writing about sports. And I realized that, because of layoffs and forced retirements, there were dozens of other former sports writers in DFW who probably felt the same way.
PressBox DFW is our attempt to bring together a lot of those familiar bylines and names – with all of their decades of experience – onto one website.
I spent 37 years writing for the Star-Telegram, most of them as one of its daily sports columnists. My career has taken me around the world, from China to Norway to the Rose Bowl with the Horned Frogs.
Cody Bailey, one of our former sports editors at the Fort Worth newspaper, joined me in founding PressBoxDFW.com. He earned his MBA from TCU and forged a new career as a brand marketing and digital technology executive.
We feel we’ve put together the best group of sports writers in DFW – among them Jim Reeves, John Henry, Richie Whitt, Carlos Mendez, Jimmy Burch, Wendell Barnhouse, Art Garcia, Marjorie Lewis and Gary West.
Our founding motto still rings true: “Writers you know, writing about the players and teams you love to follow.”
PressBox DFW won’t be carrying box scores and straight, rushed-to-deadline game stories. In this age of iPhones and Twitter, fans already know who won and who scored the winning touchdown. We also won’t pester you with pop-up ads and videos you don’t want to see. Our website continually gets compliments for how “clean” it looks, especially on a smartphone, and we hope to keep it that way.
All of our stories are available on our website since we launched, 11 months ago on Rangers Opening Day. The website is easy to search. Our stories, you will find, are often not the kind you’ll find in the click-bait-hungry local newspapers. Some of the recent stories include John Henry’s retrospective on the 45th anniversary of the Evel Knievel jump at Green Valley Raceway, Richie Whitt’s column on the Dallas Mavericks’ affinity for the basket-Euro, and in-depth looks at Bob Stoops and Gil Brandt.
We’re not trying to replace anyone’s sports section. But we think PressBox DFW does the best job in town of keeping you informed and entertained about area sports.
We invite Fort Worth Business Press readers to look for our stories in your daily FWBP e-newsletters and to go to PressBoxDFW.com to check us out.