After working as a reporter at The Register-Guard for more than a decade, Rob Moseley decide to try something new. Moseley announced he has left the newspaper and will become the editor-in-chief of GoDucks.com yesterday. Although known for his Oregon football coverage, Moseley has covered men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and track and field, among other UO sports. He is also a member of the Emerald’s board of directors.
Moseley spoke with the Emerald today and talked about what he will be doing with his new position. Quotes have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Emerald: Did GoDucks.com contact you first?
Rob Moseley: Well, I think what you have to realize is the guys who hired me, like Craig Pintens and Andy McNamara, are guys I’ve worked with every day in football season and basketball season. It certainly wasn’t an out-of-the-blue thing. I guess the best way to put it is I knew they were thinking about creating a position along these lines before I saw the advertisements for it.
Emerald: What attracted you to GoDucks.com?
Moseley: Well, a lot of things. I think the first was the potential to tell stories from a different angle. I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for 10 years and I really enjoyed it but it also was the only job at The Register-Guard that I’d really want. And so when I tried thinking about my future and how long I was going to keep doing the same thing, I started thinking about doing something different. I can tell stories from different angles, different kind of stories.
Emerald: Are you excited to finally attend UO football practices?
Moseley: Well I don’t know if that’s a slam dunk (laughs). That’s kind of been the running joke of why I would have taken the job. I think the nature of my job is going to be different as it relates to all the various personalities in the department. The access I am granted by one coach might be different from the access granted by another coach.
Emerald: What kind of articles will we be seeing from you?
Moseley: I’ll be a beat writer for football and then basketball, so in that regard I’ll be doing a lot of the same stuff I’ve been doing for the last few years. Men’s basketball will be a new thing. I’ve covered some of their games. Part of what I’m excited about is knowing I’ll get a chance to write about a lot of the different people, some of the quote-unquote “smaller sports,” less-publicized athletes and events that go on.
The example I’ve been using recently is that of Cassy Isagawa. She just finished her sophomore year on the women’s golf team and her freshman year — which would have been 2011-2012 — she had the best season in the history of Oregon women’s golf, which is a program that has been around for two decades. So she had this historically great season as a freshman on the women’s golf team and until this year when I was writing about their national championship run in spring, I’ve never heard of her. It’s sort of disheartening to me that this great story, this great accomplishment could happen right under my nose and sort of because the changing media environment, it went largely unnoticed and so I’m really looking forward to being able to tell stories kind of like that.
Emerald: What is to be seen from GoDucks.com in the future?
Moseley: I think right now GoDucks is a great resource for raw information, statistics, schedules. You go there to buy tickets, you go there to stream games online, but what I think GoDucks can do a better job of is telling stories. You know every athlete has a story, every team has a story, every season has a story, and I think fans don’t just want raw information. They appreciate a writer that can put everything that into more of a narrative context. With any luck I’ll be the guy doing that for a large portion of the fanbase — telling a story of various teams, players and seasons.