GREENFIELD — Having started freelancing for the Greenfield Recorder as a college student, 33-year-old Jeff Lajoie believes the newspaper is “a good place to cut your teeth as a young reporter.”
Now, the Recorder will also be where Lajoie cuts his teeth as an editor. Lajoie, who has been a full-time sportswriter with the Recorder since February 2017, has been promoted to sports editor following the departure of his predecessor, Jason Butynski.
In his new role, Lajoie will oversee a new sportswriter, Thomas Johnston, as well as Adam Hargraves, who covers sports in the Athol and North Quabbin towns. He will also coordinate coverage by columnists Chip Ainsworth and Joe Judd, and a number of freelance writers.
“My goal is to keep rolling out quality local coverage,” Lajoie said, adding that he wants to offer “a fresh take on local sports while not alienating the history and the way things have been done.”
He hopes to be creative and not too serious in the way the Recorder offers sports coverage, providing examples of a high school fantasy football column he started last fall, a Facebook Live video series about high school football called “The Fumble,” and a bracket through which he and Butynski sought out the greatest team in Recorder history.
“There are serious topics in sports, but at the end of the day, it’s supposed to be fun,” he said.
Lajoie, a Holyoke native, said his first experience with journalism came in high school, when he wrote for his school’s newspaper, The Herald. Still, when he started college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the fall of 2004, it was as a sport management major. He planned on becoming a sports agent.
During his first semester, though, Lajoie learned the Recorder was looking for freelancers, and reached out to Mark Durant, who coordinated freelancers for the Recorder at the time.
“I’d never heard of the Recorder before because I was from Holyoke,” Lajoie said. “Franklin County was like a foreign land.”
Durant — who was familiar with Lajoie’s father, Rick, himself a sportswriter for The Republican — welcomed Lajoie, and he would freelance with the Recorder to earn money while going to school, even trying to work at the paper full-time and go to college concurrently during his junior year.
“My dad used to tell me, ‘If you can write, you’ll never get rich, but you’ll always be able to find work,’” Lajoie recalled, noting that the saying isn’t necessarily true in 2019.
By the time he graduated in 2008, Lajoie was more interested in sportswriting than being an agent. He took a job in media relations with USA Volleyball in Colorado before returning to New England in 2010 to work for Salmon Press, an organization with 10 weeklies throughout New Hampshire. Lajoie wrote for three of the weeklies in the Lakes Region.
Still, Lajoie had a lot of family in Western Massachusetts, and found himself returning to freelance for the Recorder when he was home visiting at the holidays. When a full-time position opened up in 2017, it seemed like a natural transition.
“It was like riding a bike coming back here,” he said. “I really like Franklin County. You know everybody, the names don’t change at all.”
While covering sports, Lajoie enjoys seeing the same family names pop up time and time again as children, nephews, nieces and grandchildren take up their own athletic interests. The close-knit character of the area makes local sports coverage all the more essential.
“There’s value in picking up a paper because there’s a good chance that you’re going to know names and faces every single day,” he said.
Lajoie said his department is always looking for subjects to write about, and notes that the stories with the biggest impact aren’t always about mainstream sports.
“The best stories often come just by people giving you a tip or a heads up,” he said. “I’m not a psychic.”
To contact Lajoie, call 413-772-0261, ext. 260 or email jlajoie@recorder.com.