A columnist caricature that accompanied his byline when he was a young sportswriter in the 1980s for The News-Review in Roseburg, Oregon. During his five-plus years in the southern Oregon town, he covered high-school sports, University of Oregon and Oregon State University football and basketball, Roseburg city government, and Outdoor and recreation stories he reported and designed for an award-winning weekly page called “Venture.”
About the author
Rick Lund in 2020 retired from full-time journalism after a career in newspapers that spanned 44 years. He spent more than 35 of those years with The Seattle Times, the second largest newspaper on the West Coast.
Rick is a winner of numerous design awards from the national Society of Newspaper Design (SND) and the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). A former assistant sports editor with The Times, he also in his 21 years in Sports helped the newspaper’s Sports section win many national awards for daily, Sunday and special sections in the annual Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) competition.
After moving to the newsroom in 2006, Rick earned more SND and SPJ awards for front-page design and Sunday Business section covers. In 2019, he won first-place writing awards from the Best in the West and SPJ for his story “Tales from the road: How I survived decades of Skagit-to-Seattle commuting.”
Rick and his wife, Vicki, live in Stanwood, Washington. His “happy place” – besides Husky Stadium, when the Dawgs run out of the tunnel through purple smoke – is their cabin on Lake Cavanaugh, just northeast of Arlington, Washington. They have three grown daughters – Krista, Sonja and Greta – and eight grandchildren.
Work experience
1975-76: Part-time sports reporter for the Skagit Valley Herald, Mount Vernon, Washington.
1976-77: Part-time copy aide, agate clerk for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois.
1978-79: Sports reporter for The Daily, University of Washington, Seattle.
1978-79: Public relations intern for the Seattle Mariners baseball club, Seattle.
1979-1985: Sportswriter/assistant sports editor, city government reporter/Outdoors reporter and assistant news editor for The News-Review, Roseburg, Oregon.
1985-2020: Lead sports designer, assistant sports editor and news page designer for The Seattle Times.
Education
High school: High-school diploma from Sedro-Woolley High School, Sedro-Woolley, Washington. Class of 1973.
College: North Park University, Chicago, Illinois and Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington. Received a B.A. from North Park with a major in psychology, a minor in philosophy. Class of 1977.
Post-baccalaureate (college): University of Washington, Seattle. Communications studies. 1978-79.
Scoop, there it is
Rick shares the same nickname as Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the late, longtime Washington senator. The similarities end there. Rick was known as “Scoop” during his college days. The nickname had nothing to do with journalism. Rather, it was a description of his shot on the basketball floor. But after a 44-year career in the newspaper business …
The Inside Scoop 