Jordan brought out our best nature

You know that feeling you got when you realized your parents weren’t so nutty after all? That maybe they knew what they were talking about?

I got that same feeling about Jeff Jordan when I sat in his chair for the first time in 2003 as the new sports editor at The Spokesman-Review. Last Tuesday I was reminded of that feeling when my friend and former boss gave his acceptance speech as a Scroll of Honor recipient at the Inland Northwest Hall of Fame luncheon.

Jeff is way too humble and way too much of a friend to utter this next sentence: “I told you so.”

Let me explain.

When I arrived in Spokane nearly 20 years ago, I entered the Jeff Jordan school of local sports journalism and didn’t even know I was a student. Jeff’s unwavering loyalty to the local sports scene was unmistakable.

I, on the other hand, didn’t know North Central from Central Valley. Clarkston from Lewis and Clark. Ferris was a wheel, Mead was a Pee Chee. It didn’t take long to figure out the schools, the mascots, the leagues. That was part of the job. If you work for the sports department, you had better learn the lay of the land.

The tough part for me, and Jeff knew it, was getting excited about local high school sports. I was from out of town. The colleges and pros were more interesting to me.

I would argue for cutting back on some of the local high school stuff we covered. Do we really need this or that? How many people will read it?

Jeff stuck to what he knew was right and I followed it like a loyal assistant even if I sometimes rolled my eyes like a know-it-all teenager.

Don’t misunderstand. Jeff enjoyed all levels of sports and he understood balance. He knew there was a certain segment of readers that cared little about our local report. They just wanted the pro sports. And yes, Jeff heard from those folks. But he also knew the only place people could read about athletes in our community was in The Spokesman-Review.

The newspaper business is changing so fast and each day can seem like a new adventure. Some days, it seems, you hardly recognize yesterday. But some things in our business that were true yesterday are still true today.

Jeff understood that. Thanks to Jeff, I grew to understand it. The biggest compliment I can give to Jeff is that my philosophy toward local sports coverage is a lot closer to his than it is to that knucklehead from out of town who arrived 19 years ago.

He would never take credit for that. As long as I have known Jeff, he has deflected credit and instead preferred to pass out accolades. That is why it was really nice to see him receive well-deserved attention last Tuesday.

I will never have the incredible loyalty to the local sports community that Jeff has. Few people do.

But I believe the local sports community is lucky because a big part of Jeff has rubbed off on all of us in the sports department.