Richard Stein

When I was in Pendleton, Ore., and I was working with The East Oregonian, I was their website producer and the Pendleton Roundup was coming – the rodeo was coming. And we had lived there six, seven years before that, and I often went to the rodeo – just thought that the whole display of it – the full stadium.

And so we had this opportunity to now try to feed that rodeo into our website. I mean we’ve done photos before and we write the stories, but – but we said let’s get a video camera out there. Let’s take some videos of this amazingly dramatic and exciting rodeo event. And so, I said, “Well, how do we do that?”

And so we get out the camera, and we talk, and we go get our press passes. And so there’s a moment on the first day that I’m able to be down in the – and I’m in the stadium – and I’ve never been down in the stadium on rodeo day, always in the stands.

They start playing the national anthem, and you’re down there with your photos and the photographers, you know, I’ve got my cameras. And they’re playing the national anthem and the F-15 jets fly over, and it’s just like, you know, the pride of being an American is just bursting out of your chest, and you’re in the rodeo and in a slightly dangerous place with your camera. And you’re gonna’ tell this really cool story with the bucking broncos and the bull riders. And the stands are full. They’re not here for me, but I’m gonna’ get to tell people about this. And that was a point at which I said this is really cool. There’s a lot of fascinating things out here that are fun to tell – to show, you know.

I enjoy sports. And I have my favorite teams. But I’ll always fall for the story. And I’ll watch something even if it’s somebody I don’t care about because there’s a story here. There’s something happening that we may never see again.

I think that’s probably the crux of it that – don’t you want to witness that thing you may never see again? You now, so we as newspapers reporters and presenters have an opportunity to be there.