Canuckistan datelines

OK. Let me say this again:

It is house style to use datelines on every fucking story that goes into our paper. The change was made a few years ago when the paper went through a redesign.

And maybe I shouldn't have even posed the question on here.

JR, I haven't stepped foot in a J-School, but I've been in this biz for almost six years now. Lord knows when, or even if, I'll get a chance to go to a J-School.

 

So do photo galleries of bikini chicks. Doesn't mean it's a good idea.

 

Then maybe opening your AP Stylebook every once in a while might be a good idea -- or at least advise your editor to do so.

http://www.apstylebook.com/ask_editor.php

A reporter in our main office in Pennsylvania interviews a politician by telephone in Washington, D.C. Should the dateline be Washington, D.C., or no dateline at all? Should a dateline be used ONLY if the reporter was IN the city or borough in which the material was gathered? – from Sunbury, PA on Fri, Aug 03, 2007
For a bylined interview, AP would use the reporter's location as the dateline.


http://journalism.about.com/od/copyessentials/qt/datelines.htm

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2664713/Associated-Press-AP-Style-Guide-the-basics

 

They are not so close to each other.

 

You can claim some great mileage for that dateline.

 

I work with Ky Sports Writer.

When I started here in 2000, we didn't dateline anything we weren't at.

In our redesign, which was around 2005, that changed. Every article - sans mulicontest prep roundups - get datelines now.

Staff report on the local youth golf tournament at a course in a neighboring county? Dateline.

Preview, done by teleconference, of D-I University's conference hoops game? Dateline.

Phone interview with former area star playing in a pro league or with some big college? Dateline.

Not my rule. Not KySportsWriter's. Not my boss' rule (and I do NOT think my boss is an idiot ... he has repeatedly pleaded with our managing editor to go back to the no-go, no-dateline rule).

This is a house style trumps AP Style rule (kind of like the NY Times and N.B.A.). We have tried multiple times to change it.

If we leave out a dateline, we'll get a house/cell call at 8 a.m. from the managing editor or publisher telling us to log into the web site and add a dateline. Then, we have to write a correction for the main section and web AND fill out a one-page correction form on why a dateline was left out. Three correction forms in a three-month span and the ENTIRE sports department is out of a quarterly bonus.

It's a losing battle, if you ask me.

But it has nothing to do with KYsportswriter or my boss being a moron.

Kysportswriter is a moron for other reasons.

 

Uh, yeah, nice last line moran.