Longtime editor Roger Carlson retires

Barry Faulkner

Roger Carlson, Daily Pilot sports editor since 1988 and a full-time

member of the sports staff since January 1968, has retired. Carlson,

66, who came to the Daily Pilot as a part-time sports reporter in

1964, handled various assignments during his reporting career,

including covering the Dodgers and Angels, USC and UCLA football,

Super Bowls, the 1984 Olympics and many Rose Bowls. But he is perhaps

best known for his comprehensive coverage of high school sports, in

Newport-Mesa and surrounding communities, including Huntington Beach,

Fountain Valley, Irvine and Laguna Beach.

“He is an institution,” said Kirk Bauermeister, an assistant

principal at Costa Mesa High. Bauermeister has also played baseball,

coached baseball and also worked as athletic director at the high

school. “I don’t think anyone in our area has had a bigger impact on

youth sports and high school sports. He was the guy.”

News of Carlson’s retirement was greeted with surprise by coaches

and administrators with whom he had worked over the years. It also

brought forth well wishes and widespread appreciation and praise for

not only his work, but the manner in which he performed it.

“Roger was one of the first people I met when I got this job 23

years ago,” said Eric Tweit, Newport Harbor High boys’ athletic

director. “It seemed like he’d already been here forever, and I

always assumed he’d be there forever.

“This kind of shocks me, because there were two people I never

expected to retire,” Tweit said. “One was Roger Carlson, and the

other is my athletic secretary, Judy Ayers. Those are two people I’ve

counted on.

“The greatest thing about Roger is that he truly cared about all

four [Newport-Mesa Unified School District] high schools,” he said.

“If anything, he tried extra hard to be fair, even to a fault. There

were certain programs we had that never had much success, but he

would always send reporters out to give them their fair share of

publicity. The bottom line is: He had Newport-Mesa at heart.”

Paul Salata, founder of Irrelevant Week and a fixture in Newport

Beach for decades, said he was impressed by Carlson’s devotion to his

work.

“He was all business and he did a great job,” Salata said. “But he

also had a sense of humor that, I think, would surprise some people.

I got a lot of good one-liners out of him.

“Just go to the thesaurus, start with ‘awesome’ and go up from

there,” Salata said. ‘That’s what I think about Roger Carlson.”

Carlson’s consistently positive reporting was another attribute

that gained appreciation over the years.

“I don’t think he ever printed anything that wasn’t extremely

positive,” said Jim Warren, a retired former coach of several sports

at Newport-Mesa schools. “That was Roger’s way of dealing with

things. I think every one of the schools he dealt with could feel

that Roger was a champion of theirs. I never heard anyone say

anything negative about him.”

Newport Harbor football coach Jeff Brinkley is another admirer.

“The way he has handled high school sports, in particular, has

been a great thing for this community,” Brinkley said. “I think the

unique thing about Roger is that he really had his finger on the

pulse of this athletic community.”

Carlson developed a reputation as a dogged reporter who took

extreme delight in regularly breaking stories and beating his

competitors.

“He told it like it was and was not afraid to do it,” said Tim

O’Brien, a former basketball coach at Estancia High and Orange Coast

College. “I just liked him. He was always very accurate and was on

the money on a lot of the local kids and the local teams. He always

knew what was going on. He’d walk up to you after a game with a smile

on his face, and you always knew he had something on his mind.”

Tom Baldwin, a former Costa Mesa High head football coach who has

been an assistant coach at Mesa, as well as Corona del Mar, said he

appreciated Carlson’s upbeat manner.

“My dealings with Roger were always very personal, and you always

felt like you were talking to a friend,” Baldwin said. “Roger always

reported the sporting news as he saw it, but whenever I talked with

him, I always felt like he was on my side.”

Don Cantrell, the Pilot sports editor before Carlson’s arrival,

got to know him while covering prep football games for the Orange

County Register. He, too, admired Carlson’s approach to his work, he

said.

“Roger is one of the most honest guys you’ll ever meet anywhere,

in or out of the news business,” said Cantrell, who contributes a

regular column to the Pilot about the early history of Newport Harbor

athletics. “And he was always more compassionate than any of the

sports/news people I ever met. He never cherished negative scenarios,

where one might take the liberty of attacking people.”

Carlson’s favorite sport to cover was clearly football, and he

tried to delve deeper than just through game stories.

“I can only speak of high school football, but I don’t think

anyone covered it like Roger did, and no one has since,” said Mike

Milner, a former football coach at Fountain Valley High, which

Carlson covered when its annual Sunset League games with Edison drew

huge crowds at the then-Anaheim Stadium. “He made it such a big deal

and he covered it in depth. I always thought he asked great

questions, ones that would help the reader find out things about the

game they might not have known.”

Tom Johnson, Daily Pilot publisher, said Carlson will be greatly

missed.

“It’s always sad when somebody leaves after such a great career,”

Johnson said. “I think Roger made Daily Pilot sports into the

respected sports section it is. As far as community journalism goes,

you could never have had somebody better or more committed than Roger

Carlson. I wish him the best of luck and would always want good

things for him.”

* BARRY FAULKNER covers sports for the Pilot. He can be reached at

(949) 574-4227 or at [email protected].