Earlier on this year I had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Plouffe–the editor-in-chief and founder of the Ottawa SportsPages. Plouffe has combined his love of journalism and amateur sports and created a publication that has promoted sports in the Ottawa area for over 3 years. In this interview Plouffe shares his experiences of being a journalist as well as a small business owner in an age dominated by instant content and the ease of information accessibility.
Brian Trota: How did you initially get started in journalism?
Dan Plouffe: When I came out of High School I didn’t know what to do, but I liked writing. I learned more from the student newspaper than the courses I took!
BT: Can you share with us one of your favourite assignments when you started?
Dan: What got me passionate in what I’m doing now was when I covered the wrestling team. We had other sports like hockey and basketball covered, but no one was really interested in doing the wrestling beat. So I ended following them. And they were the best athletes in the school because the university stream would end up to the Olympics.
BT: Now fast forward to graduation. What was your next step?
Dan: After University I worked for the Canadian University Press (CUP) which is the umbrella organization of all the student newspapers across Canada. I worked with them for a year. I also interned with The Golf Association in Toronto for a year. Volleyball Canada was after that which was an awesome experience. I traveled with the men’s National Team to the 2006 World Championships and the 2007 Worlds and then to the Pam AM games in Brazil. There wasn’t too much Canadian media there; I started to gain an appreciation for the fact that amateur sport isn’t followed too much by the media in Canada. That started to build the foundation of my career.
BT: What was your first newspaper gig?
Dan: My first job was the local newspaper in Port Hope. It was a fantastic place to work and I enjoyed it. I then took a job at the Orleans Star (suburb of Ottawa.) And about 3 months after taking the position I got to experience cutbacks in big media. My job was spared but it was tough.
BT: Can you tell us more about your time at the Orleans Star?
The Orleans Star was an awesome place to work for the first year—I worked with a great editor and a great colleague and we worked our asses off. We were understaffed, but I was happy because we worked hard and put out the best community newspaper in Ottawa.
When the cutbacks came…we had to cover so much that we couldn’t do anything properly and the paper that we put was something that I didn’t want to be associated with—so that’s when I started looking around and thinking to myself what can I do.
BT: And what was your next step?
Dan: One of the things that I saw when I was in Orleans was the passion of the amateur sports community. Any time I was out covering a community sport the athletes were so thankful that I was there shining a spotlight on their community—that’s when I started putting the idea together that big newspapers don’t pay too much attention to community sports except for the Olympics every 4 years; so there’s definitely a market and interest for amateur sports to sustain a publication. I didn’t know anything about the business side but eventually I learned the ropes.
BT: Can you tell us a bit about the trials and tribulations of building the Ottawa Ottawa Sports pages?
Dan: I come from a journalism background and at that point had have never run a newspaper before. I didn’t know much about advertising or marketing, but luckily I had connections within the sports community. Several potential advertisers at least said they liked the product and they were willing to support it and they jumped on board.
After a year the program numbers increased and I guess the overall advertising strategy was working. I know that every time kids are in the newspaper they are happy and they show their parents. In turn, the parents are happy and they keep on coming back and reading the paper. I discovered that the newspaper is a great customer retention tool [adding] advertising value to the product I put together.
So right now the newspaper is a solid product published once a month and we have content on the website too. The first year was exhausting; I was free-lancing too because I wasn’t generating enough revenue from the Ottawa Sports Pages to be its own thing. I gave it a year to either sink or swim and realized in year 2 that it was something that could definitely continue.
BT: What are some tips you have for journalists starting out or even thinking about starting their own website or publication?
Dan: If I could ever foresee this day I would have definitely taken some business courses! It’s a tough industry to break into these days. I would tell you don’t listen to some of the things they say in journalism school like: the communications industry having a darkside…don’t let that get to you especially if you want to work in sports.
Also, don’t let [journalism] be your only option; have some other interests to study or something else you want to pursue because not too many people are working as journalists these days.
BT: What are your plans this year for the Ottawa Sports Pages?
Dan: We received our non-for profit incorporation on November 2015 so I have built it to a relative level of stability on my own. I am the only employee at the Ottawa Sports Pages and that makes it tough to build it any further. Running the business side takes up all my time.
On the business side I want to add some help and I started a program called the CAMPS Project. CAMPS is acronym for Connecting Athletes of All Means to Paths in Sport—and is an initiative that provides free sports opportunities and transportation to youth living in Ottawa Community Housing neighbourhoods. We provide transportation to get them to the camps each day of the week because it’s a barrier for a lot of them to get there—it’s a money issue and a transportation issue. A lot of their parents are either working or preoccupied with younger siblings or they simply don’t have a vehicle. We right now have a summer camps program but we want to expand that so kids are involved on a year-round basis. And when we are talking about paths to sport we want to give kids an introduction to a summer camps’ experience by trying a new sport or doing a sport they are familiar with in a different and more organized setting.
If we can get them involved in year-round basis (which we want to tackle as a non-for-profit) then they are learning from the best experts in youth development. Our partners at the community housing like that because [these kids] don’t often get a chance to go outside their own communities. On the very first day we ran the program two kids went to basketball camp at Carlton University and they never been there before despite and living 15 minutes down the road. It was special because its where the Carlton Ravens play.
And eventually if they develop into good basketball players they can access university scholarships because they have knowledge of going to these summer basketball camps or pursuing a career in sport. And if that doesn’t happen for them, at least they can come away with a positive experience and build on there life skills and they themselves can be positive role models in their communities. And they can be the next generation of sport volunteers and coaches and kind of pay-it forward to the next generation and their community too.
In terms of the newspaper itself we want to get daily web reporting eventually—right now it’s a monthly newspaper—it’s a little bit longer term but something we want to achieve.
BT: Thanks for your time today Dan. What is the best way to reach you for any volunteer or business opportunities?
Dan: We are always looking for volunteers whether it’s writing or helping us with the CAMPS program we are always into new ideas related to that. You can send me an email editor@sportsottawa.com
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