Authors In The Media With Patrick Sangimino

Mickey Mikkelson has reunited me with Patrick Sangimino for another edition of Authors In The Media Q&A! For the past 4 decades, before Patrick became an author, he was an award-winning journalist. According to his bio that Mickey sent me He covered the National Football League for eight seasons and eventually moved back and forth between news and sports departments as a columnist and editor.

 Q: Patrick, welcome back to Book Notions! I’m very excited that you’re back! What drew you into journalism?

 A: I grew up in a sports-crazed neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area but was always realistic enough to understand that I was too slow and small to play football for the 49ers or point guard for the Warriors. Add to that my inability to hit a curveball, which all but ended any hopes of playing third base for the hometown Giants and my chance at sports stardom. 

But at that time, I loved a sit-com called “The Odd Couple,” where Jack Klugman played a New York City sports columnist whose job was to go to the ballpark everyday and file a story. I knew then – at the age of 11 – that’s what I wanted to do.

 Q: In our regular Q&A we did discuss that journalism was a major help in writing Dogs Chasing Cars. You said It’s more than fair to assume that writing each day for a newspaper flexed my writing muscles and helped me to develop an authentic writing voice. It also gave me some institutional knowledge about the newspaper industry, which allowed me to relay in an authoritative voice on some of the newsroom antics I experienced. Since you were a journalist for 4 decades, did you find that writing a book was a piece of cake, compared to authors who didn’t already have a career in journalism?

 A: I can’t compare my experience to what other authors have encountered, but I can say honestly that writing a book was no piece of cake. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the process because I did immensely. When I finished the first draft and hired an editor, I thought we were mostly done with the book, that a little polish would make it market ready much like my newspaper editors worked to get my storied onto the page.

What I learned was that it was after the first draft when the real work began. Dogs Chase Cars was like a jigsaw puzzle. The was a need to rearrange chapters to create more impact and a better fit. In addition, that required writing new transitions – and adding new chapters – to make sure it had the proper flow.

There were times when I walked away for a few minutes (or days) in frustration, but it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my writing career because it challenged me to figure it out, to keep moving forward (as cliché as that may sound). It’s one of the reasons I look at the finished product with great pride. I did something I always dreamed of doing. I wrote a novel!

 Q: Did you go to college for a journalism career, or did you apply for a job right out of high school? I know everyone has an individual journey as to how they’ve become journalists.

A: As I said, I knew at an early age I wanted to be a sportswriter and after writing on my high school newspaper, I was recruited to join what I would soon find out was the best junior college newspaper staff in the state at Skyline Community College in San Bruno, California. The advisor there, a man named Sam Goldman, was hard on me and I needed it. I was raw, stubborn and at times extremely difficult, but I was also a grinder. He liked my work ethic and saw that I had so much more to give. He pushed to make me better – often against my will – and I eventually bought in.

When I was ready, Goldman recommended me for a part-time job writing high school sports at the San Mateo Times, a daily that was known for its prep sports coverage and its stable of young free-lance writers, which I was in awe of joining. More than anything, though, it was my avenue for paying my way through college.

Sam Goldman was a constant in my life – even after I got out of journalism school. He tracked me down when I moved to the Midwest and I would get an annual phone call from him around the holidays every year to catch up on life and the stories I was writing. Those phone calls continued like clockwork until his death in 2014 at the age of 87.

After two years at Skyline, I transferred to San Jose State University, one of the better journalism schools in the western states at that time. My time there exposed me to some great advisors, and I worked beside several talented college journalists, many of whom are still in the business and a few that have Pulitzer Prizes in their possession. It was a great time to go through journalism school. We were less than a decade removed from Watergate – and the heroics of Woodward and Bernstein – and there was an understanding that the newspaper profession was a needed part of society.

 Q: What wisdom have you learned in your 4-decade career as a journalist that you hope future journalists as well as curious readers should know?

 A: Remain curious. Understand that everyone has a story and if you’re willing to ask someone, that story will eventually emerge, and most times it’s not what you expected. That’s the most amazing thing about what I was allowed to do for so many years. Often you’re surprised by what your reporting unfurls. Remember that the story isn’t always what you might have expected it to be. That said, I would urge journalists to go into every interview, and every story with an open mind.

 Q: This next question is one of my favorites to ask authors who are or used to be journalists. Would you please give names of the famous people you’ve interviewed?

A: This is the name-dropping portion of the interview, huh?  I was privileged to cover the National Football League for eight seasons as a beat reporter and another decade as a columnist. I have interviewed dozens of athletes, coaches and general managers, including Hall of Famers like Joe Montana, Deion Sanders, Jerry Rice and George Brett. 

When I left the sports department and moved to the news side, I did stories with entertainers including Garth Brooks, Larry the Cable Guy, Billy Ray Cyrus and Huey Lewis, as well as dozens of politicians – from senators and congressmen to attorneys general and governors.

 Q: I know you mainly write novels now. Would you ever return to journalism or have you moved on?

 A: I could see myself rolling up my sleeves and writing a take-out Sunday morning piece of something or someone of note. However, my days of toiling in a newsroom, as fun as that time in my life was, are likely over.

 The industry has changed. I know a lot of publications that have scrapped the concept of physical newsrooms. Their reporters are working remotely and that makes me sad. In my day, one of the best things about being on a newspaper staff was the time spent in the newsroom, surrounded by smart, creative and funny people who spent the day chasing stories and entertaining each other with tales of their endeavors. The COVID shutdown pulled back the curtain on working from home, but it robbed so many of the social part of the job.

 Q: What is your favorite movie or television show where the journalists are main characters? One of my favorite shows where the journalist is a main character is Tokyo Vice which is based off a memoir that my friend Jake Adelstein wrote.

 A: Once a year, I still watch “All the President’s Men,” which is a classic. It showed me how hard those two guys worked to eventually break the story, which ended the Nixon Administration. I also liked the underdog mentality of “The Paper,” starring Michael Keaton, and, of course, “Spotlight.”

And when it comes to television shows, I’ve already told you about the antics of Oscar Madison on “The Odd Couple.” And does it get any better than “Lou Grant”? However, I have grown to question how Lou was able to leave the television industry in Minnesota, where he was Mary Tyler Moore’s boss, to become a newspaper editor in Los Angeles. The two mediums are so different.