Phil Barber Email and Phone Number

I'm the guy who does a little bit of everything at the Press Democrat: Raiders, 49ers, Warriors, Giants, A's, motorsports at Sonoma Raceway and lots of local coverage, heavy on the features. I occasionally pull editing shifts on the sports desk. And I do some freelance work on the side, including stories for JW Marriott's magazine. I have authored about a dozen books, including The Vince Lombardi Playbook (Lyons Press, 2009).

I worked at home while my girls were growing up and managed to stay afloat for more than eight years. I took some freelance editing jobs along the way, but mostly did it through writing. I wound up authoring or co-authoring a dozen books, and contributed to dozens of magazines, newspapers and web sites. I also wrote promotional/marketing copy and ads. (I'm using past tense, but I still freelance to supplement my newspaper job.) Examples of where you might find my stories: Bon Appetit, the Los Angeles Times Travel section and Los Angeles Times Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle and Chronicle Magazine, Sporting News, WebMD.com, NFL.com, Air & Space, Eat, NurseWeek, Napa Valley Register, St. Helena Star and several editions of the annual Super Bowl program. My books include the Vince Lombardi Playbook and When We Were Champions: The 49ers' Super Bowl Teams in the Their Own Words.

While the National Football League cranked out money on Park Avenue in New York, a small but potent publishing division supported the league in Los Angeles. I started as a part-time photo librarian during college, became a staff writer, and rose to the position of Senior Editor before leaving to pursue a writing career in 1994. We worked on an amazing array of projects at NFL Publishing (or as it was known for most of my time there, NFL Properties): programs, magazines, books, brochures, special supplemental sections, calendars, trading cards (remember that Steve Wisniewski Pro Set card in 1992? yeah, that was me), package design and advertisements, among others. I line-edited and wrote for most of them, and was project manager for three years of GameDay magazine (the national insert for in-stadium programs all over the NFL), two years of the Super Bowl program and the coffee-table book 75 Seasons, a history of the league.