Then the editor of Powerboat magazine, Eric Colby hired me as the monthly publication’s managing editor in 1993. Powerboat is long gone—a victim of justifiable print-magazine extinction—but Colby is still around and doing excellent work as the offshore racing editor for speedonthwater.com. With last weekend’s season-opening St. Petersburg Grand Prix in the books, Colby is back at it once again for the daily news site.
What makes Colby so exceptional as a reporter and storyteller? Simple—he has formal education, actual training and deep experience in his craft. He also has a natural talent for writing.
For Colby, story is everything. which is why he goes deep with every offshore racing feature he pens. He doesn’t regurgitate results lists. He watches and observes and analyzes carefully. Then he does interviews, lots and lots of interviews, until he believes he has solid grasp of the basics, which he then spins into a compelling tale.
Event coverage is perishable—from the moment a race ends, its news value declines. Strike that. It new value plummets. We no longer live in a world willing to wait for information. You either deliver it quickly or people forget they were even interested in it. That fact is neither good nor bad, it’s just reality. People are impatient. Their attention spans are short. So speed matters.
Colby understands this and wastes no time. So from the time a race ends till the time he sends his copy my way at 9 a.m. the day after a race, he works his ass off. The proof is the stories he produces, which always paint a complete picture.
Short version? Eric Colby is a machine, one hardworking, talented mechanism that speedonthewater.com—and the entire offshore racing world—is lucky to have.