Q&A: Paul Gutierrez

Paul Gutierrez grew up reading newspapers and cutting out stories in Barstow. It was the beginnings of a sports reporting career that would take him from Barstow to Sports Illustrated to the Las Vegas Review Journal to the Los Angeles Times and to the Sacramento Bee, where he currently works as a sports columnist in the Bay Area.

Along the way Gutierrez has interviewed Hall of Famers and All-Stars but he still remembers his roots.

“When I tell people where I was born and grew up, (they say), ‘Out in the middle of nowhere?’ ” he said. “Well, yea it is middle of nowhere, but I like to look at it as being the middle of everywhere too. It’s halfway to everywhere.”

He currently lives in Petaluma with his wife Amy and their two children Zachary, 3 years old and Grace, 3 months old.
Gutierrez has also written a book, “Tommy Davis’ Tales from Dodgers Dugout.” which is available in Barstow at his father Henry Gutierrez’ martial arts studio at 609 East Main Street.

Q: How did you get involved and interested in journalism?
A: I was always interested in sports journalism because I had the subscription to Sports Illustrated when I was 13, and every time I went to the grocery store with my mom, I always ran off to the news rack and went and read the sports magazines over there. It was something I was always interested in, but in high school I could never take a journalism class as an elective because I was always in band. When I got out of high school I was going to Barstow College and took some class there and realized I really, really do like it.

From there it was going down to the Desert Dispatch. My mom had always told me I should go down there and see about doing some work. We had a friend that was a pressman at the Desert Dispatch named Daniel Soto.

He took me in there and introduced me to (then Desert Dispatch Sports Editor) Larry Maestas and Larry asked me to bring in some sort of sample. So I brought in a term paper that I had written on sports and he looked at it and gave me the opportunity.

Q: What did Larry do for you once you got to the Desert Dispatch?
A: He obviously gave me the first opportunity. He didn’t have to give me the chance at doing anything. He could have said, 'Scram kid you are bothering me', but he didn’t. He gave me a chance but he always gave me helpful hints — kind of regular line editing, the real-world experience that you can’t get in a classroom. Beyond that he opened the door for me and showed me the way.

Growing up, I would read his stuff in the paper all the time too. He would help me find my voice and kind of go from there.

He gave me the opportunity to cover everything from Little league in town to going down and covering a Raiders or a Rams games on the weekend. He gave me an experience that you can’t really put a number on.

Q: What were your first stories like?
A: The very, very first one was a preview for the 1988 Barstow High School girls tennis team. I remember going down there and interviewing the girls, and it was weird because I had just graduated myself. I turned it in and Larry looks at it, and it gets in the paper the next day. I’m all excited because it’s my first byline but it didn’t look like what I had turned.

It was so bad I guess. I remember, Larry said, ‘Well you had all the important information in there, but you had to do this. It was basically the inverted pyramid because at that point I hadn’t even taken a journalism class yet. I was just about to. I was concurrently doing one at Barstow College with Dr. Richard Reeb. It was definitely learning on the go.

Q: How did your writing evolve from the time you started at the Desert Dispatch to the time you went to UNLV?
A: I think just the more you do it, the better you become. There’s still some things I look at and I can’t believe it was me in terms of just looking at the article, like man that was bad. There’s still things I wrote like last year that I look at and say, ‘Man that was bad.’ It’s just one of those things that the more you write, the more you find your voice. I hate the to say the better you become, because you can always get better.

It just evolved over time and through opportunities I got through the Dispatch. By the time I got to college it became more of the real world experience.

I’m a big fan of anecdotal leads. I like to take the reader behind the scenes, to show them you couldn’t have seen on TV or heard on the radio. That’s why we are there as writers, is to take the reader behind the scenes. That’s something I think I picked up reading Sports Illustrated all those years ago. When I was reading something there I felt like, ‘OK, I’m getting something different here.’ It’s not something that’s going to be in the regular paper. It’s not the nuts and bolts, obviously that’s important, but I want a little something extra. So that’s always what I try to bring.

Q: How did you go from UNLV to Sports Illustrated for you first job?
A: That happened because when I was in college I started to do my internships and making contacts and just meeting people out there. When I was still at Barstow College I started applying for scholarships from the California Chicano News Media Association. I was actually turned on to them by Dr. Reeb at the College.

When I was at UNLV they turned me on to this program called the Freedom Forum, based out of Washington D.C. Through them I applied for the Sports Journalism Institute, then through them I go into the Chips Quinn scholar program. All these different dominos started to fall into the right places for me. Along the way I met an editor at Sports Illustrated. She took my resumé and some clips back and just as I was getting ready to graduate I got a phone call from them wondering if I’d be interested being part of their pool.

They don’t really say we are hiring and everybody can apply. At time, they had a pool of candidates that they always kept and tried to keep fresh. The timing was right, I was getting ready to graduate and I had my resume in their pool. They called right after I graduated and offered me the job.

Q: How did you move from Sport Illustrated back to Vegas and then down to L.A.?
A: The job at Sports Illustrated, as a reporter you are a reporter/researcher. So you are basically doing a lot of hunting and gathering and fact checking for the writers. I had done that for three and half years. You use that job for one of two things — Either to work your way up there at the magazine to become a writer, that happens few and far between, or as a spring board to a good beat job somewhere else in the country. Right around that time I got a job offer to go back to Las Vegas and cover UNLV hoops for the Las Vegas Review Journal.

I took off and went and had a great time. It was my first time really covering a beat. I was able to cover my alma mater. I covered Shawn Marion’s lone year at UNLV. I had a good time there and I was there for that one season. Right around that time, the L.A. Times was hiring. I got a phone call and they brought me in for an interview. Right after that I got the job offer and the Las Vegas Review Journal said the same thing (as Sports Illustrated) — ’You gotta go. Good luck.’

Q: Was it difficult or different to cover the school that you went to?
A: Not really, if anything I probably erred on the side of being too critical because you never want to be seen as a fan anyway when you are covering the team. That was one of the questions they asked when I was interviewing for the job. I said, ‘No.’

I don’t think I did. I think I was just oblivious and young at that point that I didn’t know any better than to just be a bulldog and just cover the team.

Q: What was it like working for the L.A. Times?
A: That was pretty cool because that was a paper I grew up reading as well. All of sudden you are there in L.A. covering the Dodgers and meeting all these people that you had watched as a kid. That was pretty cool and the recognition of being there was pretty nice too.

Being at one of the bigger papers in the country and one of the more respected, it kind of helps in terms of getting stories or going to places and having a bigger budget. I got to go to the Dominican Republic twice while I was at the L.A. Times. That wasn’t going to happen at the Las Vegas Review Journal.

If I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have written the book with Tommy Davis because I was in the right place at the right time.

Q: How did you get involved with the book with Tommy Davis?
A: The book came about because one of the guys on the copy desk (at the L.A. Times) was good friends with the recruiting editor for the publisher, Sports Publishing, Inc. They wanted to do a series of Dodgers books, and the first book they wanted to do was on Jamie Jarrin, the Spanish-language, Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Dodgers.

I asked Jamie and he declined, said he wasn’t ready to do it yet. I was kind of crestfallen and heartbroken at that point but the publisher still wanted to do some books if I was interested. I said, ‘Yea.’ They said they wanted to do it on the three separate eras of Dodgers history since they moved to L.A.

The first era would be from when they moved through the mid-’60s, when they had won a couple of World Series. I talked to the Dodgers’ historian and he suggested Tommy Davis because he was a big enough star that he had that name recognition but, he wasn’t so big that he had already done something. I called Tommy Davis up, he was willing to do it and it just kind of took off from there.

Q: What was your role in producing the book?
A: It was interviewing him and getting him to give me other phone numbers of guys from that era and doing the research. Basically when I would do interviews, I would just try to transcribe it and if I had to fill in some gaps here and there or put in some more information I’d try to write it in his voice because the book is written in his voice. I’d put it together with all the help of my wife.

The thing was due and I am literally sitting in the delivery room while my son is being born and my wife is in labor doing the fact checking on that thing. It was pretty intense.

Q: How many hours, days or seconds did you have left until deadline at the point that your son was being born?
A: It was like the next day ... actually it was due that day. Nothing like procrastination I guess. Everything got done. I still get looks from my wife when I talk about it.

Q: What do you do now with the Sacremento Bee?
A: The opportunity came about from the Sacremento Bee to cover the Bay Area to write takeouts. First it was to cover the Radiers but it evolved into doing takeouts, features, columns and stuff like that.

There’s three of us writers that live here in the Bay Area, myself and the Raider beat writer and the 49er beat writer. We try to cover the Bay Area as much as possible with stories that would interest, intrigue and have an impact on Sacremento readers.

This interview was conducted by Sports Editor Matthew Peters. For more questions and answer check out the Desert Dispatch Sports Blog at http://.barstowsports.freedomblogging.com. Look every Tuesday for more Desert Dispatch Q&As.