The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

http://pilotonline.com/sports/new-sports...90999.html

Harry is sliding over to a "columnist and special projects reporter" role. Ed Miller is all ODU all the time. While I like Ed we are going to miss Harry in the football beat. He is much more plugged in and social media savvy.

Harry was terrific, not only for ODU, but for CUSA. Ed has some big shoes to fill.

Yeah, not happy about this one. Miller has not demonstrated the savvy, connections or energy Minium has. Big loss.

I know a young lady who recently left the paper rather than take a reassignment at a huge pay drop. I seriously believe the papers end is near. Only a matter of months, not years.

Not a football fan but Ed Miller sure could write a lot more basketball articles. His blog sometimes goes weeks between postings. Not prolific at all. I sure hope that changes.

Minimum did a great job with football coverage and won awards for it. So it makes just perfect sense to remove him! It's like they are trying to sabotage the paper on purpose.

This absolutely SUCKS! I so hope I'm wrong about this one.


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Minium was awesome. I'd rather him switch to all ODU. I appreciate Ed, but Harry has done so much more with football than Ed has with hoops.

Thanks for the great work, Harry. You will be missed.

Somehow I have to believe that going to ODUBlitz first think in the morning just won't be the same. Best wishes to you, Harry.

I remember when the ODU football beat was created, the intent was to not have both football and basketball covered by the same person because there was too much overlap between the seasons. But that was back when staffing levels were less skeletal than they are now. So you'd have the ODU football writer doing NSU men's and ODU women's basketball, the NSU football writer covering something else in the winter, the ODU men's basketball writer doing something else (I think maybe Virginia football?) in the fall. Obviously with so few hands on deck now, you have to do what you can to get by.

Having Harry in a special projects/columnist role is best for the paper and its readers, I think. He's the strongest reporter in the department, if not the entire organization, and there's enough business and big-picture stuff that really calls for someone like him being the one to cover it. And they haven't had a regular columnist on the staff since Molinaro and Tom Robinson were laid off (Robinson had been rotated out of columns before then but still had the ability if the situation required it). With Harry being the most experienced reporter on staff, he's probably got the best voice for it (I guess they could always have Kerry do some sports columns?).

Ed's a great writer and can hold his own on reporting. He's not Harry, and if you're looking for that, you might be disappointed, but he'll do well in the role. He's different from Harry, just as both were different from Radford.

Somewhat surprised that they had David Hall go from NSU to Virginia football. Not that he's not a solid reporter and writer in his own right, but it's easier to get UVa coverage from other sources. I guess to a degree it's an optics thing; the biggest paper in the state not sending their own reporters to Virginia *and* Virginia Tech regularly is not a good look. Sounds like NSU basketball is getting downgraded from having a dedicated reporter to occasional coverage.

The other thing to consider is this: The Washington Post used to shake up its beat structure every couple of years to keep reporters from being too source-dependent and to allow for different approaches to the beats that they're covering. Not that I think that's a problem at the Pilot or that it's often been a problem before, but there's something to be said for a change in beat writer leading to a change in coverage. It's a risk, but one of the biggest papers in the land thought it was one worth pursuing (they also had and have massive advantages in headcount, talent and resources, so there's that).

It'll suck not having Harry on the beat, but I'd be plenty willing to wager that ODU will still by large measures have the best coverage of all the CUSA schools, which are either covered by smaller markets with less-experienced journalists or larger markets that don't treat them as even a secondary concern.

The Pilot has become largely irrelevant. It's really just a news aggregater with a couple of local reports thrown in. Lost all respect for the paper when they muzzled Holland and his great INVESTIGATIVE reporting on Sessoms. Holland and Minium are the only 2 real reporters they have. Everyone else is just an opinion piece.

He will be missed by all the 12th Monarchs who still read the Pilot.
Somewhere an ODU fan is playing taps over the special edition section the Pilot put out for the Bahamas Bowl.

Translation: "Harry gets more clicks than anyone else in the organization. We're dying slowly and need to put him somewhere people other than sports fans can add to that...we'll thinly spread everybody else to cover what's left."

I am in my mid 30s and read the newspaper daily, over the years I have wonder how VA Pilot could afford to operate until I recently had two unexpected deaths in my family. It cost me over $2400 for two obituaries in the VA Pilot, it cost $7.00 per line for an obit. I guess their making a good amount money off people dying.

Terrible news

Boo.

I wonder if this will lead to wire reports on away games.

Boo again.

(01-08-2017 01:46 PM)djnva Wrote:  Boo.

I wonder if this will lead to wire reports on away games.

Boo again.

For football, I doubt it, unless it's a situation where ODU is 2-8 heading to FIU or FAU for a meaningless game. As for basketball, they'll probably continue to be judicious about which trips to take — for example, I don't imagine they'll spring for the UTEP-UTSA swing unless ODU is nationally ranked or they can clinch the regular-season title out there.

ODU sports coverage is probably the safest bet the Pilot has at this point; it's their signature beat and they'll erode the other things they cover before doing substantial cutting back there. 15 years ago, when they were staffing the Redskins, Virginia Tech and Virginia while sharing a NASCAR reporter with the Greensboro and Roanoke papers, that wouldn't have been the case. But now ODU is undeniably the prestige sports beat there.

Bottom line: Never say never, but for the foreseeable future, I don't see the Pilot not staffing an important road game for ODU football or men's basketball, and unless they're horrible, I doubt that they'd not cover any road football game.

(01-07-2017 03:19 PM)Old Dominion Wrote:  Yeah, not happy about this one. Miller has not demonstrated the savvy, connections or energy Minium has. Big loss.

I know a young lady who recently left the paper rather than take a reassignment at a huge pay drop. I seriously believe the papers end is near. Only a matter of months, not years.

Every and effort are huge. Our reporting in the AJC since we lost Ken Sigiura to the GT beat and inherited the disinterested Doug Roberson.

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Devastating news. We have been incredibly fortunate to have Harry covering ODU Football and I would have loved to have him cover hoops.
He provided great content and not just quantity but quality.
Ed does fine when he does something. His blog is so rarely posted to it's not worth checking any longer.
Local news and ODU sports, specifically, is the only reason I subscribe to the paper.
I mainly subscribe for Harry's coverage.
If football is covered like basketball has been covered than there is no need.
I wish Harry well. I welcome Ed and only hope this serves as an impetus for greater coverage of ODU Basketball and Football.

As a person, he was a nice guy. I was listening to the weekly Podcast that he and Tom White did this past season and HM seemed a little too skeptical as to where the program could and indeed ended up. After listening to the Podcast, us as fans would think the Monarchs were gonna lose every game. This is my opinion, the guy simply had no faith in the program. Hopefully Ed can explain to the fans better as to what to expect, instead of always the worst case scenario. I think either Andy Mashaw or Ted Alexander would be a better replacement for the weekly Podcast.

(01-09-2017 01:09 PM)Retroview1955 Wrote:  As a person, he was a nice guy. I was listening to the weekly Podcast that he and Tom White did this past season and HM seemed a little too skeptical as to where the program could and indeed ended up. After listening to the Podcast, us as fans would think the Monarchs were gonna lose every game. This is my opinion, the guy simply had no faith in the program. Hopefully Ed can explain to the fans better as to what to expect, instead of always the worst case scenario. I think either Andy Mashaw or Ted Alexander would be a better replacement for the weekly Podcast.

Harry has always given top notch or A+ coverage of the Football program. However, there were times he became a little pessimistic, but it never swayed his dedication to his coverage. He was fantastic at offering us fans his all. He always would go above and beyond what was expected of him. He became a Blue Blood and a member of Monarch Nation and was not just a columnist reporting stats and giving us what the paper required. He would share with us recruiting insights, future scheduling news, Stadium leaks, human interest stories, expectations, predictions and rumors. All along allowing us fans of Monarch Nation to be a part, feel special. He treated his readers as members of the inner circle and made us all feel like we were an ODU football insider.

I hope that Ed will be as vigilant with his attention to football as Harry has been over the last few years. As time moves on Ed will earn the trust and respect of the fans if he shows the readers he is willing to become more than just a reporter. I always felt Harry cared about the program and sincerely enjoyed his professional and personal connection/ relationship he had with Bobby Wilder. What I perceived may or may not have be true but there appeared to be mutual respect from both.