Adrian Curtis, the former Press Association football reporter, has quit sports journalism to launch his own railway publishing company.
Curtis covered Chelsea for PA from 2004 until last December, before deciding to make the move into publishing magazines and books about his other great love – British Rail diesel locomotives.
The former sports reporter has just posted a first-quarter profit from his new venture and has no regrets about ending a 30-year career in football to become his own boss.
Curtis began his career as a news reporter on the Scunthorpe Star in the early 1980s, before moving to the Angling Times.
Curtis has since covered every major footballing event from Euro Championships, World Cups, FA Cup finals, League Cup finals and Champions League finals during a successful football reporting career – winning a number of awards while with EMAP.
He has worked for, and edited, Match and Shoot football magazines, and covered football as a sports reporter for the Mail On Sunday, Evening Standard and PA.
Yet while he was writing on sport for those titles and freelancing for most of the country’s tabloid and broadsheet newspapers during the last three decades, he was also working on his passion for railways and Western Class 52 locomotives in particular, writing numerous articles for the railway press, including Railway Magazine, Traction and Railway World.
He has now taken on the role of editing and publishing three successful bi-monthly and quarterly subscription magazines: Classic Diesels & Electrics, Western Power and Diesel-Hydraulics Illustrated.
“The first three months have been fantastic and have vindicated my decision to quit football reporting after 30 years,” Curtis said.
“It is not the game it once was from a reporting point of view and sitting by a computer re-writing stuff from websites was not my idea of football reporting.
“The move to multi-media platforms, while I can see they are the way forward, was not the reason I came into the profession. I wanted to write not point a video camera at proceedings and upload.
“The decision to begin my own business has been a success from the word go but then I have had a reputation as a writer in the railway field since 1997 – something not many people even knew about.
“I will be finishing and publishing a football book, based on my 30-year career, entitled Any Chance of a Quick Word? sometime later this year or 2012.”
Curtis can be contacted by email here: westernlegacypublications@hotmail.co.uk
UPCOMING SJA DATES
Tue Apr 5: SJA Olympic Question Time. Click here to find out more
Wed Apr 13: SJA 2011 Annual Meeting, at offices of UK Sport, Russell Square. Strictly SJA members only.
Wed Dec 7: SJA 2011 British Sports Awards – note the date in your diary now.
All details subject to alteration. Keep checking sportsjournalists.co.uk for updates