Jason Williams: I'm home, ready to deliver blunt-force honesty on Reds, Bengals, Cincinnati sports

I’m home. And I’m as hungry as I was in 1996, when I first walked into a real newsroom as a junior at the University of Cincinnati.

Home is here, in the sports section. It’s the greatest honor of my career to be named the new sports columnist at The Enquirer and Cincinnati.com.

I have this job because of where I came from. My journalism career was born and raised in sports at the Cincinnati Post. I’ve never forgotten where I came from.

The Post is long gone. But the old afternoon newspaper’s people and the lessons they taught me to prepare for this day and this job very much endure.

I spent the first 8½ years of my post-college career in sports – covering college football at the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri, then Xavier and UC basketball for The Post and onto the Minnesota Twins beat at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I've been at The Enquirer for 10 years, the past five as political columnist.

But the journey really started as a part-timer taking high school sports scores over the phone at The Post. They paid me something like $25 or $30 for a four-hour night shift. It didn't matter. It was an opportunity.

My parents always taught me to take full advantage of opportunities. It didn’t matter whether I was taking scores on high school tennis or sweeping boiler decks in the summertime at my dad’s power plant back home in Gallia County.

You go all in.

And I sure did at The Post.

The sports section was known in the sports-writing world for punching above its weight. The Post was scrappy. It was full of scoops and different angles. It had hungry, talented, aggressive reporters. They were competitors to the core. They were the underdogs.

It all fit me so perfectly.

Lessons from the Cincinnati Post

Lucky me. While others were sitting in class at Missouri and Northwestern and other so-called great journalism schools, I was in the newsroom or press box gaining real-world experience with Mark Tomasik, Mike Bass, Bill Koch, Todd Jones, Todd Archer, Jeff Shelman, Janet Graham, Dave Tippenhauer, Dan Hopwood, Tim Curtis, Jeff Horrigan, Marc Lancaster, Brian Rokos, Kevin Goheen, Richard Skinner and others.

The Post was the best journalism school I never had. Those journalists were my instructors.

I watched them. I asked them questions. I bothered them, but they all embraced me. I'll never forget watching Jones at his desk feverishly working the phones on the Bengals beat. His intensity was intimidating – and I loved it. Archer and Shelman were also young, up-and-coming, hard-working reporters at the time.

They taught me how to report. They taught me to lock into a tip and never let up until you had a fully sourced scoop. They taught me the importance of developing and maintaining trusted source relationships.

I eventually landed an official internship at The Post in summer 1998. Bass and Rokos, an assistant sports editor, would spend time, sometimes hours, working with me on crafting features on high school athletes. Stories they knew no one would read, yet they still went above and beyond to help me.

They taught me how to write a newspaper story. They taught me the importance of accuracy and double-checking facts. You spelled people’s names correctly or an editor would let you have it.

Bass eventually became the sports editor. He ended up hiring me three times in our careers – for that internship, to cover the college beat full-time for The Post in 2000 and then again to cover baseball in 2004 when he was sports editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Mike was my lead instructor. He taught me how to put it all together – writing and reporting.

Mike showed me how to look for different angles on stories, which you had to do at The Post and Pioneer Press. They were the underdog papers in their markets. He hated the competition and loved aggressive reporting.

Mike gave me one of the best pieces of advice in my career: “You don’t write for other journalists. You don’t write for the people you write about. You write for the readers.”

I've always written for the readers.

'It's just sports'

Koch taught me Cincinnati sports and culture. He also taught me to have fun with the job.

Many fans and newspaper readers remember Bill, who’s enjoying retirement after a successful career at The Post and The Enquirer. He covered the UC beats for both papers. He also was a columnist at The Post.

Bill understands the intersection of Cincinnati sports and culture better than anyone I know. He’s a West Side native, La Salle and UC alum. Bill was a perfect Cincinnati mentor for a non-native. I first knew him as a columnist, and he was a damn good one because of how well he understood Cincinnati.

Bill's columns still resonate with me today – from his one-on-one game against then-UC basketball coach Bob Huggins to his commentary about "Norwood Al," an everyman who was a legend among friends and neighbors for his ability to sneak into major Cincinnati sporting events.

I learned to appreciate good stories and storytelling from Bill. I could listen to him for hours tell behind the scenes stories about local sports figures and about his travels as a sportswriter. His off-the-record stories are legendary to those who know him. Bill had a great ability to balance taking the job seriously while still having fun.

He also gave me a great piece of advice. Bill sent me a note before I left The Post for Minnesota: "Remember, Chief, it's just sports."

I've adapted that advice to what I've covered over the years. It's exciting to reinsert "sports" now.

Column style: Blunt-force honesty

I've never truly shown any of those Post colleagues and friends what they've meant to me. So here I am, doing what I've done as a columnist since July 2017: Being raw and honest and emotional and putting it out there. A columnist must put himself out there to give perspective and context to his commentary on the topics important to readers.

The Post folks built my career foundation and I've run with the opportunity and developed my own style. It's why I'm here today in the dream job.

It's a call 'em like I see 'em style. (Yes, Marty Brennaman was one of my childhood sports heroes, along with Larry Bird, Bernie Kosar, Eric Davis and Pete Rose.) This column is blunt-force honesty. It's not fluffy, nuanced and chock-full of flowery words. My commentary is rooted in reporting and thought.

As Enquirer Executive Editor Beryl Love said: "You won’t always agree with him – but that’s the point, isn’t it?"

I never write anything I don’t believe. Sometimes I praise. Sometimes I criticize. Sometimes I may do both about the same person or topic in consecutive days. I can silo things because it's not personal. I don't wake up thinking: "I wonder who I can piss off today." That's not me. I'm fair.

And I'm happy as hell to be home.

Contact sports columnist Jason Williams by email at jwilliams@enquirer.com and Twitter @jwilliamscincy

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Reds, Bengals: Meet new Cincinnati.com sports columnist Jason Williams