I think the St. Petersburg Times is somewhat unique (at least in areas of the United States where I have lived) in having a sailing columnist. The Miami Herald has had very little sailing coverage since Eric Sharp left, many years ago. He was the outdoors writer, but he happened to be a sailor, and he also happened to love catamaran sailing.

Although the burden is upon the sailing fleets and clubs to provide both information and story ideas to the media, it sure helps when we have embedded sympathizers.

Most people who go to college to become sports journalists (including my daughter, my son-in-law and my former husband) do so with the idea of covering football, basketball and baseball. When they get jobs in big-city markets, those newspaper and TV stations cover the things of greatest interest to the greatest numbers of people. I doubt if sailing is even on that list.

My former husband was once briefly assigned to the sailing beat at his Cleveland newspaper. He was devastated, and insulted. He considered this to be absolutely the worst beat, only fit for rookie reporters or as punishment detail. Fortunately, I only had to listen to him complain for about a month until he was put on a major beat. He only wrote a couple of sailing stories, and I had to help him out with terminology.

Small-town local papers, on the other hand, are usually delighted to get sailing stories.

I'm not saying don't send stories to the big-city media -- some of them may get used on a slow-news day. I'm just telling you what I know about the mindset of big-city sports journalists and/or of the sports department management.

We need Dave to write a Sailing PR Primer for us.