🎅🏼 What you are about to read is a surprise. Source Media CEO Jay Allred and Deputy Managing Editor Carl Hunnell cooked this up over the last few days to celebrate one of the kindest, most hardworking guys we know.
That guy is our Managing Editor, Larry Phillips, and he has no idea this is publishing today!
We hope you’ll join us in celebrating the publication of Larry’s fantastic book, “The Spirit of a Team”, which he co-wrote with his friend, Lee Owens.🎁 Best of all, everyone who purchases an annual Source membership between December 18 – 24 will get a free copy of the book as our gift to you!
Larry Phillips knows more about football around Ohio than just about anyone, witnessed by his two great books on the state’s high school gridiron legends.
He also knows what it takes to build a winning team away from the field, witnessed by a journalism career that has spanned nearly four decades.
That’s why the new book he co-wrote with acclaimed football coach Lee Owens is a beautiful marriage of vocation and avocation.
The book vividly paints for readers the real-life examples of how actual CEOs, coaches and players used motivational and leadership blueprints to achieve success in the biggest arenas of business and sport.
The simple fact is that Larry’s life and career have mirrored the title of his new book, “The Spirit of a Team,” available in bookstores and also at Amazon.com.
The two interviewed multiple individuals who exemplify leadership, including Matt LaFleur, Luke Fickell, Dwight Schar, Matt Kaulig, Sue Ramsey, Carl Johnson, Dan Niss, Bob Sebo and more.
Those interviews and subsequent book chapters provide an insight that only Larry’s talents, knowledge and experience — along with Owens’ 26 years of coaching — can produce.
I could not be more proud of Larry for this new book, which comes after both volumes of “Ohio’s Autumn Legends.”
The first two books demonstrated Larry’s love of history and football and his meticulous attention to detail. This latest continues that trend and showcases his ability to conduct interviews and extract compelling content from his sources.
Born to be a journalist
This new book also shows Larry’s own growth as a journalist, far beyond the world of just sports.
Let’s face it. There are some people you meet in this business that you know immediately are made for this line of work.
That was the situation when I interviewed Larry for his first reporting job coming out of Ohio University in 1989.
He sat down with me at a small newspaper in Fostoria, nervous but yet confident. He wanted primarily to write sports. But he had a willingness to expand his horizons, a trait that has served him well throughout his career.
What he didn’t know at the time was one of my old editors at another paper had already told me I should hire Larry, based on his own interview with him.
The job was his — even before he walked in the door.
Perhaps the best hire I have made in my own career.
When I went to the Mansfield News Journal in 1990, editors asked if there were others like me back in Fostoria.
Just one, I told them. His name is Larry Phillips.
Larry rejoined me in Mansfield not long thereafter.
Write what you know
I have worked with and/or watched Larry grow as a journalist, husband and father ever since, even during the years I stepped away from the business.
We were reunited formally in 2019 when he graciously hired me at Richland Source.
I had missed my friend.
During these past six years, I have watched how Larry runs his own newsroom as managing editor. Lots of thoughts come to mind as I do.
Patience. Focus. Kindness. Caring. Coaching. Concern. Motivation.
Love.
So I am was not shocked when I read his new book. Those same traits are found in all of the great leaders identified in “The Spirit of a Team.”
Larry is able to capture all of this in his book — because those are the same things he demonstrates every day at work, at home and everywhere else in his life.
An adage in journalism is to write what you know.
Larry does more than that in his new book.
He writes what he lives.
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