Otterblog

Today marks the end of a remarkable career at the Winston-Salem Journal. Terry Oberle, our sports editor, is retiring. His last official day is Monday, but it’s a holiday, and barring some unforeseen news this weekend, he’ll walk out the door today for the last time.

Terry has been sports editor here for 34 years. That’s a lifetime. And through that time, our sports staff has been known for its professionalism, its stability, its knowledge of teams and sports, and its flat-out hustle.

Winston-Salem is an incredibly difficult town to be sports editor. We have two major universities (WFU and WSSU) here and a third (ASU) in our circulation area. But many of our readers care less about these schools and want more coverage of the schools in the Triangle. There’s greater interest in pro sports for obvious reasons than there was 20 years ago, and we keep building new high schools. The result is a lot of competing agendas—for space, for reporters, for attention. Terry has juggled them all with a great deal of poise and grace for his time here. And honesty. If you ask him a question about why we didn’t cover something, he will give you an answer. It may not be the answer you want, but it will be based on thought rather than emotion.

Some message boards say we write too much about Carolina, proof that Terry is a Carolina grad acting as a homer for the school he loves. He isn’t. He is a Florida boy (just ask him ...) who went to Florida Southern.

We had a retirement party for him the other day, and one of the things I noted was Terry’s knowledge outside the world of sports. As befitting a top-notch journalist, he is interested in the world beyond his beats, and that knowledge has been incredibly helpful in covering stories from business to metro to features.

I wish him the best in the next stage of his life.