Agate clerks

You don't need a crappy editor.

Come in on a winter weeknight where you have to get out the agate page plus the NBA and NHL agate, and there's a zillion prep basketball games being called in, and not only are the major area Division I teams playing, but you're getting phone call after phone call asking for the score on some game. You and your clerks may end up doing the most work of anyone in the room, and that's when everything goes smoothly.

I've had nights when slamming my head against the wall would have been less painful.

I've had nights

 

Tap tap...

 

Agate clerks are a rumor at my joint.

 

The agate clerk position at my shop has changed as the years have gone by. When I was coming up agate clerks were your primary in-putters of things. Now, as a beat writer, I find myself putting in boxscores while also having to write gamers on deadlines. This is done under the pretense that the agate clerk back at the office has too much to do at the office. OK. We put out about 60 pages a week and with the agate clerk now redefined more as rim help, that's 128 man hours a week (two 40-hour deskers plus seven four-hour evening shifts of agate clerks) devoted to getting out those 60 pages. Take away the fact that two of those pages are outdoors done independently of desk and a couple of pages worth of preps/others are done by prep personnel, then you have a fairly inefficient use of desk help, if you ask me...

 

Agate maggots ... that's what we were fondly called back in the day.

My competitor's pub has clerks we all call "6-pointers" because that's about how much they make per hour. (Actually the going rate for a clerk is $7.69 per hour)