On minor success

I’ve been writing some bits and pieces lately for Snowdon Sports. They are a big sports and media news agency. It came about after Graham Snowdon, venerable cycling reporter for the Daily Telegraph, posted about reading my book on Fazbk, saying positive things.

He then suggested I do few bits for them. Thus far it has included some newsdesk shifts. You can do these from home, it involves chasing up results and writing up a report. It’s quite exciting, insofar as it’s about as close to journalism as I’ve ever got. More exciting that that, I get to see my written words in Cycling Weekly every couple of weeks, shifts dependent. I did the results write-up a few weeks ago and have also done the copy for this Thursday’s edition.

It’s quite an odd experience. You have to write according to a particular style, keeping it fairly dry and making sure you don’t include extraneous detail. I quite like the challenge, even if it’s a million miles away from the fluid prose sections of ACE and the ramblings on here. Snowdons also supply race reports and details to British Cycling and the CTT. I’ve had two interviews up recently, one today featuring Adam Topham. He came across very well when I spoke to him; reflective and self-aware.

The highlight of all of this so far is ringing people up randomly and dropping the CW bomb: “Hello. It’s Paul Jones ringing for Cycling Weekly.” It’s worth it just for that.