Making it to the big leagues

By Kristen Swann

Moving up to the top in the job world takes time and hard work. Someone who knows all about that is Paul Jannace.

From a small daily newspaper in Allegany County, New York, to Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Jannace has worked his way up the spectrum and knows exactly what it takes to get there.

Paul Jannace

After graduating from St. Bonaventure in 2004, he worked for two years with the Associated Press in their New York City bureau as an assistant with the Major League Baseball editorial department. At the same time, he worked part-time for a newspaper in Brooklyn.

In April 2006, Jannace began working as a news reporter for the Wellsville Daily Reporter in Wellsville, N.Y.

Wellsville, a town with a population of about 4,500, was quite the change from living and working in Brooklyn.

Living closer to his alma mater, Jannace made a name for himself after his promotion to sports editor in August 2007. For the next seven years, he helped cover 12 high school districts in Allegany County, and also worked as the region’s Buffalo Bills beat writer.

In a rural community such as Allegany County, high school sports hold a higher precedent than they do in most areas.

“I had a unique transition coming from New York City to Wellsville. I learned pretty quickly how important the high school sports scene was in the small towns of Allegany County,” said Jannace. “It reinforced the principle of writing for the benefit of the reader.”

Jannace became well known among locals for his commitment to covering and accurately reporting Allegany County’s high school games.

“I had to match the passion [of the reader] and remember I am doing this job for the athletes and coaches, as well as the parents of the athletes and the community members,” he said.

“I remember seeing him at our games and looking forward to reading the paper the next day,” said Deanna Mountain, a three-sport athlete who graduated from Genesee Valley in 2013. “He always got things right and it was cool to see an article with your name and maybe even your picture. It might not be so important to most people, but to us it meant a lot.”

“Even though I wasn’t from the area and had no connections to any of the towns and schools I covered, it became easy to be passionate about the athletes and coaches because the more they won, the easier and more fun my job became,” said Jannace.

After his time in Wellsville, Jannace briefly worked for a weekly newspaper in Queens, the Times-Ledger, as a copy editor. Since February 2015, he has been an editorial producer for Major League Baseball Advanced Media.

Although there were a few stops along the way, one can’t help but be impressed by Jannace’s achievement.

For MLBAM, Jannace edits and produces content for all 30 MLB sites as well as the MLB.com homepage. He also has similar duties for the National Hockey League and NHL.com.

“Producers are assigned a specific game each night and he or she is responsible for all content on the sites for both teams,” said Jannace. “[This includes] editing stories, writing headlines, choosing photos and video, and placing a live story in its proper place on the site.”

When producing content for these sites, Jannace has a strategy he follows that is especially particular to sports writing.

“The best stories are written tight by telling the story in as few words as possible,” said Jannace. “Telling a story is about informing the reader what they need to know… but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Tell the entire story, but using more words than necessary adds up and can make your story less interesting.”

Jannace tries to simply stick to the facts when reporting.

“A college professor of mine always advised us to omit needless words. It’s something I think about every single time I write a story.”

Working in the journalism field for more than 10 years, Jannace has gained some valuable knowledge. When asked to give advice to young journalists, he stressed the importance of being versatile.

“A sports writer should know how to write a hard news story about a crime or economics. The more you can do, the more valuable you are to a publication,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in versatility because of how journalism continues to evolve and the more skills you can acquire, the better equipped you are to evolve along with it.”

“Journalism in 2022 will be different, just like it is different now than it was in 2012. It’s an ever-changing environment,” he said.

For journalism as a whole, Jannace is sure that one thing will always be true:

“One thing that won’t change is that a journalist’s number one priority should be the search for the truth. That can never change.”

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