Brad Fuqua is a sports copy editor, page design and reporter for the Corvallis Gazette-Times, a daily newspaper that serves Corvallis and surrounding communities.
Brad’s career dates back to the fall of 1983 when he talked a small weekly in southwestern Nebraska into giving him space for a column. As a junior in high school, Brad penned “Husker History” for the Elwood Bulletin. A few months later, he secured his first paying job in the business by getting $2 per story for the Bertrand Herald.
Brad accepted a scholarship to attend McCook Community College, where he helped create a newspaper from the ground up. Brad was named the MCC Indian’s first managing editor and the publication won national awards in its first two years. While at MCC, Brad worked part-time in the sports department for the McCook Daily Gazette answering phone calls from coaches and writing roundups.
Brad transferred to Kearney State College (now called the University of Nebraska-Kearney) for his junior and senior years. He was a paid staff member of the campus newspaper, the Antelope, and also worked part-time for the Kearney Daily Hub, which had awarded him a scholarship. With the Hub, Brad started out answering phones from coaches but soon advanced to on-site game coverage. While in college, Brad wrote feature stories for the Lexington Twin-Weeklies and Grand Island Independent. He also spent the summer between his junior and senior years back at the McCook Daily Gazette, where he worked in the news department as a reporter, page designer and photographer.
Brad earned a bachelor’s degree from Kearney State in comprehensive journalism. Following graduation, he went to work for the Grand Island Independent, the third-largest newspaper in the state. With the Independent, Brad’s beats included Nebraska football and high school football, wrestling, girls basketball, track and field, and baseball. Brad covered several Husker football games, including road trips and bowl games. He was also a regular guest columnist for Huskers Illustrated, a magazine that covers University of Nebraska sports.
Brad left Grand Island in 1991 and took over at age 25 as managing editor of the Colby Free Press, a daily newspaper in northwestern Kansas. The following year, he accepted a position as copy editor in the news department at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota. Within a few months, Brad worked his way up to front page design and was part of a team that won first-place state association awards. Brad also worked on special projects which included the organization and creation of a new full-color tourist guide for the newspaper.
In 1997, Brad relocated to Arizona and took a job as sports editor of the Williams News. Less than two years later, he was promoted to editor of the Grand Canyon News where he lived on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He was named the company’s Journalist of the Year in 2000. In 2003, Brad transferred to the company’s flagship daily newspaper in Prescott, Ariz., where he was a sports copy editor and senior sports writer. While at the Daily Courier, he covered high school football, girls basketball and baseball, and professional hockey.
In 2008, Brad moved to Libby, Mont., to accept a position as managing editor of The Western News, a twice-weekly newspaper. In 2011, he left to join the Corvallis Gazette-Times in the sports department.
In more than two decades on the job, Brad has won more than 50 awards in writing, page design and photography. Brad has also earned a reputation as a college football historian as the publisher/editor of Glory of the Gridiron. He has researched and compiled football scores from the 1850s-present for more than 1,000 colleges and universities and contributed articles on pre-1900 football to various publications.
The son of Gene and Jo Fuqua of Broken Bow, Neb., Brad lives in Corvallis with his wife, Canda, and his son, Brandon.
