My Year in Review
With 2021 wrapping up, here's what I learned over the most eventful year of my life.
Good morning! These two words are how I begin journaling each morning, and so I thought they were appropriate here because (a) I’m sending this out in the morning and (b) this, in some ways, is a journal entry that I’m sharing with all of you.
First, thanks to everyone who has followed along and subscribed. This is the 40th newsletter that I’ve written since launching The Wes Side in October. With so much content out there, it’s not lost on me that you choose to spend a part of your day reading stuff I write. But among the columns, analysis and Friday Donuts, I never really took the time to write the “Why I’m moving to Substack” post.
So in today’s newsletter, I’ll reflect on the last year, share why I left my dream job to start this newsletter and what I’m planning on doing next.
Isolation
These days, I cover the Heat and the NBA from Miami’s FTX Arena. While I used to take going to basketball games as a credentialed reporter for granted, last season showed how precious that access is.
As the Golden State Warriors beat reporter for the Bay Area News Group from 2019 to 2021, my job was to know the ins and outs of the team, form relationships with players, coaches and execs and tell unique stories so fans can get to know their favorite team the way I do. But during the 2020-21 season, the media’s access was essentially the same as anyone watching a game on television. We could go to home games at Chase Center, but we couldn’t go in locker rooms or attend in-person press conferences.
That made the task of telling unique stories extremely difficult, but not impossible. In hindsight, I’m extremely proud of the work I did last season. When a lot of beat reporters were sticking to the basics, I found ways to detail Stephen Curry’s approach to mastering his game, James Wiseman’s preparation for the NBA and wrote an oral history of Steph’s first basket.
At the same time, I was falling in love. A college friend and I had reconnected during the pandemic and I spent much of early 2021 traveling to Florida to be with her as much as I could. Eventually, something had to give.
Leaving My Dream Job
For those of us who have survived this long, I think the pandemic helped us reconfigure priorities. For instance, I’m a self-diagnosed workaholic — and I don’t say that lightly. I’m truly addicted to that feeling of being productive, and I chase it nearly every minute of the day. It’s not healthy and I’m, uh, working on it.
As such, being an NBA beat writer was a perfect job for me. I got to spend time traveling, writing, Ubering to arenas, watching basketball, writing, interviewing and writing. Most muggles don’t know the demands of the job, but I was regularly logging 80 to 90 hours a week. It was heaven.
Then the pandemic hit, and I simply couldn’t escape into work the same way. Without the travel or in-person interviews, I was left with a lot more time on my hands. Fortunately, after reconnecting with my now-fiancé, it was time well spent.
The pandemic also brought along more pressures from the business side of the newspaper. The suits who owned the Bay Area News Group increasingly forced conversations away from journalism and toward page views, and it became difficult to evade that pressure and do the sort of work I wanted to do. While I think the whole “newspapers are dying” thing is a bit overstated, it became clear that the pandemic was ushering along the end of newspapers as we knew them faster than had already been anticipated. It was also clear that with a reporter’s salary, I wouldn’t be able to build a life in California.
With all that said, I still loved my job, but I needed to make a change. So in September, I quit and moved to Miami.
Cross-country Bar Crawl
At this point, Jules and I had been dating for more than a year. She flew out to San Francisco, helped me pack what I could fit from my 401 square foot studio apartment on Post St. into my Jeep Cherokee, and we hit the road.
We started North, heading to Portland. The plan was to head East from there, taking two weeks to drive through Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and, finally, to Florida. I’ll save some of the stories for future content, but I’ll give you the big one now: On the first day of the trip, I asked Jules to marry me. She said yes.
Starting Something New
Midway through September, we arrived in Miami. Both of our families live in South Florida, and I moved into her place in Brickell. The wedding is set for the Fall of 2022. It’s weird how life works out. Suddenly, I had all this personal stuff figured out but my job was in flux.
Podcasts are a growing sector in media, and the Locked On Podcast Network had been my home for podcasting since it launched in 2016. The good people at LOPN allowed me to transition from Locked On Warriors back to Locked On Heat, the show I started along with my co-host David Ramil but had to move away from for the two-plus years I was on the Warriors beat. I’d also go from hosting the national Locked On NBA show on Tuesdays to Fridays.
But I didn’t have a home for my writing. During the pandemic, several sportswriters such as Marc Stein and Ethan Strauss left dream jobs, like I did, and moved to Substack. After talking with some people, I decided to start The Wes Side.
What’s Next
The early support for The Wes Side has been incredible. Thanks to all of you who have read, commented on and shared the newsletter. Like the first year of a new late night talk show, it’s been a bit of an experiment. I’ve been tinkering with formats and different things, but I’ve begun to settle on what it is I’ll do here: This is my home for my columns on the NBA, pop culture and South Florida sports. While the newsletter remains free, I plan to make available a paid option next year.
It’s not the only thing I’ll be doing. I’ve got big plans for 2022, including launching a new podcast project, leaning even more into YouTube and leveraging my newfound independence as a freelancer to write about interesting subjects for different outlets.
If you’d like to be the first to know about these projects, send me an email (wcgoldberg@gmail.com) and I’ll add you to my list. Or, more simply, subscribe to this newsletter. If you’d like to get in touch, my inbox is open.
To everyone who has followed along, thank you.
Wes