Welcome to PressBox DFW.
The days of the daily newspaper being delivered to your doorstep are nearly gone. Cutbacks and layoffs have robbed the local newspapers of many of their best and most experienced writers — men and women who have been sports columnists and beat reporters and have covered the local teams for decades.
At PressBox DFW, we decided that these great writers needed a place to continue to write.
Our website launched in March, 2018 — Opening Day for the Texas Rangers — with stories from some of the great names that you used to read in the local papers. Former Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Gil LeBreton, who’s been writing about sports for more than 40 years, is PressBox DFW’s co-founder and editor. Many of his colleagues and friends from the Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News have joined him — Jim Reeves, John Henry, Richie Whitt, Matt Mosley, Carlos Mendez, Wendell Barnhouse, Jimmy Burch, Gary West, Art Garcia, Jan Hubbard, Anthony Andro, Marjorie Lewis, Dwain Price, Bill Nichols and others.
We think we have the best group of sportswriters in town, and we hope you’ll agree with us.
As the local print sports sections shrink, newspapers are trying to quietly lay off or buy out their oldest and most experienced writers and curtail coverage of big events and, sometimes, even the local teams. The Fort Worth paper doesn’t even have a Mavericks beat writer or someone to regularly cover the Big 12.
Rounding up disenfranchised, formerly-employed sportswriting talent here, therefore, was not that difficult. But we also wanted writers who had experience, credibility in this market and a gift for the printed word. There are sports stories to tell in Dallas-Fort Worth, and we plan to give our team of writers an unfettered canvas to paint those stories.
Some of our writers are Hall of Fame voters and, in Jim Reeves’ case, a two-time nominee for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s prestigious Spink Award. We’ve covered Super Bowls, World Series, Wimbledon, the Masters, World Cups, NBA Finals, the Stars’ Stanley Cup night and the Tour de France. Gil LeBreton alone has covered 16 Olympic Games (9 summer, 7 winter).
The people running newspapers these days are convinced that their target audience is mostly short-attention-span readers, mindlessly flipping through your iPhones, stopping only to stare at goading headlines and videos, videos, videos. Our mission at PressBox DFW is not to replace the local newspapers as the place to find the daily injury reports and dispatches about the eternally mundane Jason Garrett press conferences. Rather, we want to entertain you, whether it’s making you laugh or making you think, because we still believe in the joy of the written word.
We’ll include a link to a pertinent video from time to time, but we promise it won’t be a video that pops up unannounced in the middle of a story and makes you watch a 30-second ad before you can continue reading. That’s just not what we’re about.
We want you to read our stories, yet we’re not here just for the clicks, like the newspapers are. When we write about something or someone, it’s because we think it’s a good story, not because some corporate schmuck from California thinks the topic will generate more page clicks.
If you look at your daily newspaper, you’ll probably be hard-pressed to still recognize any of the bylines or the names in charge. That’s because most of them are new to this area and don’t know Hulen Street from Highland Park.
At PressBox DFW, though, we’re one of you. We ARE local. And we want you to be part of the gang. Read us daily. Watch us (or listen) to our fun, fast-growing weekly podcast, PressBox DFW Live!
Sign up for our FREE newsletter that will keep you informed whenever we post a new story or when important sports news breaks.
Come up to the PressBox. We promise you’ll be entertained.