Gerry Dulac didn’t need to type the address of the McKeesport Community Newsroom into his phone when he agreed to talk about sports journalism there.

The building that now houses the McKeesport Community Newsroom is where Dulac began his journalism career in the 1970’s. He was a 17-year-old high school student when he started at the The Daily News as a part-time journalist answering the phones on Friday nights to record the high school sports scores for the next day’s edition. 

Dulac’s father wrote for the paper for 53 years and often took his son to the office when working on editorials for the paper. Dulac inherited his love of writing and language from his father and his mother, a McKeesport High School English teacher. 

Dulac followed his dream by studying journalism at Penn State University, first at the McKeesport campus and then in State College. After graduation in 1979, he was hired full time at the Daily News as a general sports reporter. Dulac said that when he began at the paper it was the “biggest and the best” suburban paper in Southwestern Pennsylvania. 

Before he accepted a position with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1993, Dulac worked at the Pittsburgh Press for more than a decade. Dulac said he once dreamed of working in a major market like Chicago or San Diego but traveling with the teams taught him to appreciate living in the Pittsburgh region. 

“Being grounded in the community helps my writing,” he said. “I’ve had offers to leave over the years, but I’m happy right here.”

Today, he is a senior journalist covering the Steelers and professional golf. When asked which sport he preferred to cover, he quickly answered “golf.” He said that he loves covering football and praised the Steelers organization, but he said he has a “passion for golf.” 

Dulac is an avid golfer and said that this gives him a “feel for the game.” 

He said that when covering a Steelers game he is confined to the press booth, but that covering golf he is able to walk the course with the players. 

“When you feel the game, feel the atmosphere…that feeling transfers to your writing!”

After 40 years as a sportswriter, Dulac said he has seen a lot of changes in the business. 

“The players used to need the newspapers to communicate with the fans; now they have a direct link to the fans on social media,” he said. “Many players have more followers than the paper has readers.”

He also said digital media has changed the expectations of the fans: “Today they want their news right now. We used to do human-interest stories about the players, where they came from, what they think. Today the fans want quick facts.” 

Dulac believes that the popularity of sports betting has fueled the desire for bare bones statistics. 

“Fans want information they can use in their fantasy football leagues or in placing bets,” he said.

Dulac said that good sports reporting is about relationships. 

“After you’ve been around awhile, you learn who really knows what’s going on, not guys who just think they know what’s going on,” he said. “Getting to know who you can trust saves a lot of time. You can spend days trying to sift through nonsense and half-truths if you don’t have these relationships.” 

He talked about some of his favorite encounters with key figures in the sports world. He said he likes “regular guys,” people who treat others with respect, who are polite and who make those around them feel comfortable. He described Steelers hall of fame running back Jerome Bettis as a real gentleman and deceased coach Chuck Noll as “a fascinating man who could talk about anything from cooking to world history.” 

Dulac said has great respect for late golfer Arnold Palmer. He met Palmer after he had retired from active play, but said that he was a kind man who was generous in all things. 

When asked about some of the players who get in trouble off the field, Dulac reminded the audience that, “many of them are still kids; they still have a lot to learn.”

When asked what advice he has for young journalists, Dulac responded, “Know your subject inside and out. Be accurate and responsible. Don’t take ‘cheap shots,’ players may get mad if you report the facts, but they’ll get over it. If you say Ben Roethlisberger missed four out of five passes, that’s a fact. Saying Ben couldn’t hit the side of a barn or couldn’t throw a ball in the ocean, that’s taking a cheap shot. Remember you have to go into the locker room and look these guys in the eye.” 

Finally Dulac said, “A journalist’s job is to go find the facts. The real facts, not your personal perception of the facts.”   

The second speaker of the evening was Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photojournalist Steph Chambers. Chambers started her slide show with photos of herself as a young athlete. Her mother passed away when she was a young girl and sports helped her to deal with the grief. 

Chambers love of sports and photography led her to study journalism. A college internship took her to Alaska where she covered a winter race. While trying to get a shot of the race, Chambers lost her footing and took a fall which led to her being evacuated by helicopter and a stay in the hospital. 

Far from deterring her from pursuing a career in journalism, it was in the hospital that she realized that being a sports photographer was how she wanted to spend her life.

Chambers said she believes that emotion is the key to good photojournalism. That capturing the human drama inherent in sports is what distinguishes great photos from the mundane. 

To make this point she shared a selection of photos she has taken of local high school football, softball, baseball, and soccer teams. 

One of her most challenging assignments is to photograph over a hundred local high school football teams during their summer training camps. This work which often required her to cover several teams in a single day requires her to work quickly to capture the story visually. Rather than settle for posed “baseball card” images, Chambers works hard to take pictures which capture the emotion of the experience and the personality of her subjects. 

Chambers used a series of these stunning photographs to illustrate the techniques she used to create them. As a photojournalist, her goal is to capture an image that combines information with emotional impact. She described how she looks for “something extra” to accomplish this. 

She shared photographs that took advantage of lighting, backdrops, unusual angles, silhouettes or framing and cropping to transport the viewer on to the field with the players. Over the years, Chambers has cultivated strong relationships with the coaches and school officials to gain access to the teams and locker rooms so she can tell the full story of high school sports.

“It is important to keep taking photos after the play,” she said, illustrating this point with a series of photos of a high school soccer player heading the ball to score a game winning goal, celebrating his win on the field and then kissing his girlfriend in the stands. Any one of these photographs was a powerful standalone image, but viewed together they form a narrative that makes the reader feel that they were in the stands during the game. 

Like her images, Chambers’ lively description of her work process was both informative and entertaining. 

The audience for the evening was made up of people of all ages, some interested in regional sports and others in journalism. 

- Jim Busch