Longtime sports editor stepping aside after long career
· Yahoo Sports
If you’ve followed Greenville area sports over the years, chances are you’re familiar with the name David Claybourn – the longtime sports editor for the Herald-Banner.
A fixture at high school sporting events for decades, Claybourn will hang up his reporter’s pad and camera as he steps into the next part of life outside the newsroom and press box. Claybourn will be retiring from the Herald-Banner on Friday – marking the end of a distinguished career where he was synonymous with Greenville and Hunt County sports.
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Publisher Lisa Chappell lauded Claybourn for both his work and his ties to the area.
“David’s passion has always shown through in his work. He is entrenched in our community and is loved for it,” Chappell said. “If you played sports in Hunt County, I don’t care how long ago it was, David Claybourn remembers you. I am grateful for all that he has given to the community and our newspapers. I am sure we will still see him wandering around from time to time with a camera hanging from his neck.”
Herald-Banner editor Kent Miller, who’s worked closely with Claybourn over the last three years echoes Chappell’s thoughts, particularly his knowledge of the Greenville sports scene.
“We’re not just losing a good journalist, we’re losing an irreplaceable font of local sports history who I relied on heavily being someone who’s relatively new to Greenville,” Miller said.
But Miller said Claybourn was more than an employee and award-winning journalist.
“David always took the time to stop by my office just to check and see how I was doing, not just as his editor but because he truly cared about what was going on in my life away from the newsroom,” Miller said. “In an always-stressful position like mine, those visits were a welcome respite from the scores of tasks staring back at me.”
Claybourn came to the Herald-Banner in July of 1979 after starting his journalism career at the Bowie News in Montague County. He graduated from Del Mar College in 1975 with an associate’s degree and Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University-San Marcos) in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree.
During his career at the Herald-Banner, Claybourn has been recognized by professional peers as an award-winning sports journalist from the regional to the national level – garnering multiple accolades from the North & East Texas Press Association, the Texas Press Association, Texas Managing Editors and the National Newspaper Association.
Perhaps his biggest accomplishment came last year when he was named the Class A Star Sports Writer of the Year by the Texas Managing Editors. He was also honored in 2025 as CNHI National Photographer of the Year for his photo of a jetliner passing in front of the sun during the much-hyped complete solar eclipse. That photo was shared with news organizations throughout Texas, nationally and even globally.
Claybourn also annually produced the End Zone football season preview glossy magazine that has won numerous awards, including Texas Press Association recognition as Best Special Section.