Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
The O’s star sports columnist is going independent. Good luck with that.
I’ve never seen John Canzano sweat.
It’s impressive — you’d notice with that dome. But whether he was whipping out a column on deadline before most finished transcribing, or going all out in his crusade against the Pac-12, he was a calm force of nature.
He has detractors, certainly, but I’d argue it’s near impossible being an impactful columnist at a major metro newspaper for two decades without ticking everyone off now and then. I don’t agree with everything he writes. We have vastly different approaches. But John’s writing is always entertaining and it’s always different, and that’s one of the most important things I learned while working together at The Oregonian from 2012 through 2018.
John often zigged when others zagged. And it’s often led to some of the best sports writing on the West Coast.
He left The Oregonian on Tuesday. Some people cheered — and that’s fine. The O says they’ll be conducting a national search for a replacement. I hope they land someone great. But they’re not going to land anyone with the same sway.
Here are a few other things I took away from him during that time:
Branding is important. I learned early in this industry that the company won’t look after you. Some of the saddest days of my professional career were during layoffs at The Oregonian, when journalists far more talented than myself were given unceremonious ends to the jobs they loved.
Fun story: I was an intern working out of the Hillsboro bureau office when the 2013 layoffs came. News broke in the morning, but The O’s brass didn’t make it out to us until late in the afternoon. The first thing publisher Christian Anderson III said when he showed up was, “Well, I suppose you’ve heard the news. What do you want to know?”
He then announced The Oregonian would be leaving its downtown Portland home, complained that his commute would be longer, then eventually laid off nearly everyone in that office who was making more than $14.50 an hour. I always dreamed of having a career like Ken Goe’s — 40 years in one place — but I realized after that day that careers like Ken Goe’s are near-impossible in the modern era.
I’m not surprised that John can leave The Oregonian, because I’ve long believed his brand to operate independently of The Oregonian’s. They signed his checks, sure, and they were happy to slap his face on newspaper bins. But to me it felt like more of a partnership than a traditional employee/employer relationship — and a lot of that had to do with him building up his “Bald Faced Truth” brand. Taking care of your “brand” was something just starting to be taught at Montana’s journalism school when I was there in the late 2000s. And John is the first person I met who did that exceptionally well on a local level. I found a lot of inspiration in that when creating this site.
You can always make that flight. When I first started as a reporter I never could have imagined a time when I’d want to end a work trip early.
Free flights and hotel continental breakfasts? Why would anyone want to come home?Then once you get into a groove and know the layouts of hotels before you’ve even been in them, it can get old really quick.
I like asking John in the press box at away games what flight he’s on later that night. It can often seem like a magic trick. Because there’s no way that someone can make an 8 p.m. flight after a 2 p.m. kick and still manage to write something as good as he did. I’ve learned to thrive off that pressure.
He and I were covering Oregon’s Final Four run for The Oregonian in 2017, and this gamer I wrote about Oregon’s come-from-behind win over Rhode Island to make the Sweet 16 was filed from the front-seat of his rental as we hauled to the Sacramento airport. I think it’s one of the best gamers I’ve ever written.
But if you’re not used to it, ho boy. There was one Pac-12 basketball tournament in Las Vegas where he and I were very comfortable leaving the hotel 45 minutes before our 5 a.m. departure back home. My guy Danny wasn’t used to it.
We all made the flight. Not all of our blood pressures measured the same.
Stories don’t have to come from on the field. One of the reasons John is able to catch those flights is because he usually has a solid idea of what he’s writing before the final whistle. To some, his postgame routine may seem leisurely — rarely do his columns include much context from the postgame press conferences. He can do that because his eyes are open from the moment he gets to the stadium. He’s always chatting with people. Always taking scenes in. Six years later, I still love this column he wrote about the woman who operates the elevator at Autzen. It’s not easy to stick the landing on something like that.
You don’t have to be from here to thrive. When I wrote for the Montana Kaimin, the school newspaper at UM, I initially hated not being from Montana. So many of my colleagues were born and raised there, and they had such a better grasp on story ideas and a feeling for the community. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I really felt like I could write with any sort of authority on any Montana subject. But I’m glad I got that experience because, being from Alaska and wanting to be a sportswriter, I had hoped I’d never have the advantage of getting to write about my home state.
Most of the writers you’ve read for the last 20 years in this state are from Oregon or went to school here. Quick. Greif. Schnell. Moseley. Jude. Fentress. Goe. Buker.
Canzano is from the Bay Area. He came to The Oregonian from the Fresno Bee in 2002. I know he had job offers to leave and for various reasons he’s stuck in Oregon. He’s made a career and a life here. That’s what I’m trying to do.
Relationships evolve. An epic moment in Oregon sports media history came in 2010, when Chip Kelly appeared on Canzano’s radio show and the two duked it out over John’s sources. I mean, that’s great radio. Now listen to Canzano’s interview with Kelly from last fall’s Pac-12 media day.
That, too, is great radio. You’d have no idea they were once at each other’s throats. I think John’s softened a bit over the years in a good way. His stories are generally about the people who make up the games we watch. They generally have heart.
I’ve seen him put a lot of care and effort in helping out young writers. He did here.
I just hope I learned enough to crush his little start-up like a bug.
— Tyson
