Welcome to PrepsAgenda.com

Three months ago, I was told my job as a sports reporter at the Green Bay Press-Gazette was being eliminated.

The first thing I did after leaving the building was go to a gas station and purchase a handful of newspapers, which featured my final bylines – the last remains of my existence there.

The stack of papers thumped on the counter in front of me while my heart had sunk to my stomach. The only real relationship I had ever had in my adult life was suddenly over.

The cashier gave me a puzzled look as she rang up the total for the papers and exclaimed, “There must be something special in there.”

I softly muttered back, “Not really.”

She replied, “Oh, an obituary.”

Yeah, that was about right.

Given the state of the newspaper business, I was by no means shocked to be one of about a dozen sports reporters Gannett cut across Wisconsin in May.

Still, it was a tough blow to absorb after I had put my blood, sweat and tears into a career with such an uncertain future.

How to support?

After going through the gamut of emotions, I came to the conclusion that I’ve been extremely blessed.

I got to spend the previous 10 years living out my childhood dream and meeting some amazing individuals along the way. I didn’t want that to end.

What I decided to do next was get up, dust myself off and find the best avenue to keep the storytelling aspect that I love so much in my life.

That’s where PrepsAgenda.com comes into play.

This website will serve as a canvas to share my passion for high school sports through articles, podcasts, videos and photos.

Although I greatly appreciated being contacted about some job opportunities in neighboring states to stay in the media industry, I felt starting my own online endeavor was the best way for me to stay in the game so to speak.

Meanwhile, I’m thankful to be getting the chance to use my skills to transition to a different line of work with a full-time job in the marketing department of a local financial institution.

I would like to make it clear that PrepsAgenda.com won’t have an endless supply of content and statistics for everything that is going on in the preps landscape across the Green Bay area. I’m simply one person and wouldn’t be able to do that.

My goal for this website is to find a niche and build a community that will appreciate the coverage I can provide.

My plan is to focus my efforts on football, wrestling and track. It’s what I feel I can handle while working a full-time job and still managing to pursue other goals in life.

It’s likely I’ll still cover other sports from time to time, but in launching this website I don’t want to put forth unrealistic expectations for what it will be.

I would love to see the day where I could provide more coverage and make a living with this online venture. However, that day is a long way off and, in all honesty, may never come.

The elephant in the room I haven’t addressed yet is how exactly do I plan to fund this website?

Honestly, I don’t know if there is an answer to that.

That’s a big reason why I’m doing this. I want to see if there is an answer since traditional media outlets have struggled to transition its business model in the digital age.

Right now, I’m OK with taking on the costs to produce it (web-hosting fees, camera equipment, internet data and gas).

I’m hoping to be able to garner enough money by the end of the school year to be able to cover those costs. It’s a reasonable financial goal I feel for this.

If I can’t accomplish that, then this will likely be my swan song because I can’t justify investing more money and so much time into it anymore no matter how much I love reporting. I’m hoping that scenario doesn’t play out, but I could take solace in knowing I gave it my best shot at least.

I’m using Patreon.com to try to raise money for my sports reporting efforts.

Patreon.com is a crowdfunding website for creators, like artists, podcasters and writers. It’s basically like an online tip jar that allows creators to raise money for their work.

If you want to financially help support what I’m doing, please visit my Patreon.com page for more details. You can sign up to make a donation of $3 a month to my account. You can cancel at any time if you wish.

The content on my website will remain free for everyone, whether you decide to donate or not. I’m using this instead of a subscription model because I don’t think it would be right to charge high school athletes to view the website.

My hope is that there is enough people out there that believe in me, and what I’m doing, that will be willing to donate money to help cover the costs above.

I really don’t know what type of response I’ll get from Patreon.com. I’m fully expecting to get nobody to donate, but also hopeful there is at least 50-100 individuals out there who want to help.

If you can’t support financially, I hope you’ll consider sharing the website on Facebook, Twitter and through word of mouth.

I’m not actively pursuing businesses to advertise on the website. But if you’re a business that would like to support it with an ad, please feel to contact me.

I realize this is probably a lot to digest (Forgive me, but I haven’t posted an article in three months so I’m making up for lost time). But I appreciate you making it this far down the page.

I know there will probably be some bugs to fix with the website, and I hope to eventually create an app for it.

However, I hope you’ll enjoy the content I can provide as I roll out football previews over the next couple of weeks.

I can’t thank everyone that has reached out to me since May. I truly appreciated all the support.

I hope I can make this place something special for all of you to enjoy.

– AP