Toronto Maple Leafs beat reporter David Alter on being his own boss

If you’ve been laid off from journalism jobs multiple times, David Alter feels your pain. He also wants to offer a glimmer of hope to frustrated, unemployed, or underemployed sports reporters. After numerous setbacks, he has found his own definition of success. Alter is his own boss, cobbling together partnerships, including one with The Hockey News, to cover the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’s a gig that lets him attend all 82 games, home and away. We recently caught up with Alter to discuss his breakaway from the traditional media route. Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. Awful Announcing: What’s the best part about being your own boss? David Alter: “I don’t feel the same pressure to please an editor about whether something does or doesn’t get covered. I can actually decide. You’re just able to go about your day and set your content plans as you see fit without having to compromise in any way. That’s really the best part about it. And then also, because a website produces revenue, I’m able to hire people and delegate stuff.” What are some of the challenges? “You’re kind of always on. As content comes in and you feel it’s going to do great on the website, and you’re trying to build traffic, you feel that pressure to keep numbers up because you’re trying to grow the website. You’re thinking more about the tech side of things, the backend, all those other things that a regular journalist working for another place doesn’t have to worry about. So, maybe that can come at a cost of not being able to do the long, feature-y things you want to do all the time because you have to get the essentials done first.” Are there other differences? “As a salaried employee, if your job is covering (a team), you don’t have to worry about any of the other elements of the business. You’re just covering the team, and that’s it. Here, you’re a business. You’re trying to grow partnerships. You’re trying to grow the website traffic. You’re trying to grow in Google rating. You’re trying to grow in authority, all those other things that you wouldn’t necessarily think about if you were just an employee.” How do you afford to go to all the away games? “I have a sports betting partner with Bodog. I’ve got others that come now and then. I work with a place called Myodetox. It’s physical therapy. And then I’ve learned a lot of the other ins and outs that have come with keeping travel costs down. I’m more proactive about finding deals that make sense so that I can keep my net income up. I find ways to get a lot of points and to help offset my travel costs through crazy deals. I follow travel blogs and find cashback portals that give me a kickback to use toward the next trip.” Why does going on the road matter? “Just establishing the relationships and setting yourself apart from any of those other places, because I do feel that you get a lot of readership retention when you’re getting stuff out there before it’s posted (by competitors) online. Being able to provide a ‘Here’s what I saw’ look at a sporting event, like a practice or a morning skate. No. 1, it’s just about going and developing relationships. You just aren’t able to do any of that if you don’t show up.” Do you feel you get better access to people because you go on the road? “Yes, for sure. They respect the fact that if they see you every day, you’re doing the grind. It’s not the same type of grind as an athlete, but they respect that you’re there in that regard. When we do news conferences, I ask a question, and I hear answers back on a first-name basis. That’s a big thing. That’s a sign of respect on both sides. I think that gets lost a lot of how things are done these days.” Of the times you’ve lost a job, what felt the worst? “I got a job with the National Post, a national Canadian newspaper, in the fall of 2015 to cover the Leafs full-time, with salary, benefits, everything. That ended up being three months and two weeks because two weeks after my probation period, they shut down the entire sports department. It was pretty crazy because if this was always the plan, why did they hire me? It put me in a weird spot. It was the most demoralizing experience.”

@davidalter35 The #media meal and overall experience at Delta Center for Leafs vs Mammoth was amazing. Good free #food and lots of nice freebies. #fyp #foryou #BTS ♬ original sound – David Alter

What made hockey different to cover than other sports? “One of the unique things about hockey is that you can watch practices. Like baseball, you can watch batting practice. It’s not the same because they play every game or every day. But for football, I know they close off most of practice. In hockey, we can watch every practice and morning skate. We can pick up on tendencies. We’re able to ask about those things and some of that strategy. That element is really the most significant differentiator.” Is this job easier because you are single and don’t have children? “It would be hard. A lot of my bandwidth is freed up by not having those responsibilities. You’re right about that. But to a point, I would also add that if I were younger, it would be even easier to pull off. It’s harder in my 40s to maintain this because this model didn’t exist in my 20s. Now it exists for people in their 20s. And part of me wanting this story out is showing that through learning different elements of the business, you can find a way to have a website and a rev-share partnership that, if you establish yourself, you can grow and build. That’s what I like about this whole thing.” When and why did you start posting media meals for the NHL teams on TikTok? “I started doing media meal reviews a couple of years ago because I got a sense on TikTok that people were really into food and behind-the-scenes stuff. Given that I travel so much, I wanted to find a unique way to bring people into some of my work. I started posting a few, and they started taking off. First, it was just a video of the spread, then I started showing clips of other stuff. This year, I started putting myself in the videos and ranking all 32.  Now, when I go to every game, it is that building/city’s opportunity to move up or down my list based on the experience.”

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