Cops

Also, on your first ridealong, be sure to wear one of these...

 

The premier writing jobs at a newspaper are sports columnist, city news columnist, editorial writer, cops reporter, movie writer. If you're ever in a position where you turn down one of those jobs, you have to ask yourself what you're doing with your life.

 

Oh, bullshit. Restaurant critic, travel writer, Washington correspondent, golf writer, outdoors writer. Whatever floats your boat. I can see why some people wouldn't want to spend their career talking to cops.

 

: Yeah, golf writer and restaurant critic are really on par with editorial writer and sports columnist. LOL

 

Both are far better than cops writer, although restaurant critic is about the only one of the four I'd want.

 

Far better in what way? Cushier job? Sure. More respected or more important to the paper and your readers or your career? No way.

 

They might very well be better for your career. I've yet to work at a paper where cops wasn't the low job in the newsroom.

 

Where do you go after being restaurant critic or golf writer?

 

Are you fucking kidding me? You have such a narrow view of the biz. Most newspapers -- and I happen to disagree with them -- have really de-emphasized crime reporting in the past 20 years, especially spot coverage, in favor of stupid trend stories.

I actually have in front of me a 215-page 1992 Freedom Forum report on crime coverage in which David Simon, among others, decries the decline of the police beat and the using of rookie reporters to cover it. If you believe there is prestige involved in covering this beat, you are out of touch with most newspapers today. The crime coverage is pathetic and police reporters bang their heads against the walls.

Editorial writer? Oh come on. On most papers it's a roomful of zombies.

Golf writers have it good. How often do you see one voluntarily leave that beat for another one?

 

"You have a narrow view of the biz," says the guy who thinks print is making a comeback any day now once we go back to doing things the way we did 20 years ago.

I didn't use the word prestige. I said it was a premier writing gig. It is. If you do it right you have the chance to do unbelievably important things for yourself, your paper and your community. It can open a lot of doors to bigger and better places.

Being a great golf writer leads you down a path of writing about golf somewhere else. Which is terrific if that's what you want to do, but then that's a very narrow view of what someone might want as a career, isn't it?

 

At most papers today, they don't let police reporters do that. They don't want to scare off suburban readers by reporting on people in the city killing each other. The story runs as a brief on L-13. It is the rare newspaper today where that isn't the case. It was a great beat in 1940. At most papers today it's a place to get your stories buried.

 

Well, that's true. But when there's a quadruple murder at the mall or police brutality case, even the dumbest editors aren't going to bury it.

Keep in mind, if you're on a pro beat, I'm assuming you're not getting offered a cops beat or editorial writer job.