Definitive Pac-Man story

I usually see Dalton merely as an interstate exit on 75, but if by some chance I see said vacuum cleaner, I'll rat you out.

 

It's always easy for outsiders to say "That's a story you should have covered better/differently, etc." Unfortunately, it's also a comment directed at us by readers rather frequently, and look at the regard their opinion in often held in.

This mentality that you "have" to go somewhere to cover every story is ridiculous, especially if your paper is struggling with resources, etc.

The Tennesseean is not the Washington Post or New York Times, no matter how much someone thinks they ought to be.

And BTE, you're right. Tennessee residents likely already know the Pac Man story pretty well.

 

The Tennessean sent Paul Kuharsky to Atlanta and Morgantown a few months ago to do a blow-out on Pacman. It was good and had a lot of the same sources.

 

When you writing about athletes who score touchdowns, 50 percent of a newspaper's readers immediately aren't going to care. They won't even get to the jump. But when athletes act like a menace to society, and are involved in strip club shootings that make national news, I think it's really bogus to say, "Well we've covered stuff about his background before."

If the Tennessean wrote a big blowout about Jones a couple months ago, I can understand not doing another one. I wasn't aware of that. But I'd still be tempted to run another big story about him, even if it rehashes some of what you already addressed but hopefully with new material, and put it on the front page because an entirely different audience is now suddenly interested in him.

You don't need to be the NYT or the Wash Post to send someone to Jones' hometown and someone to Vegas to write a big story about him. You just need an editor-in-cheif who realizes that the story is bigger than sports, and hopefully he/she won't look at it like the money should come out of your sports budget.

 

This is a bit nit-picky, but the reference in the story to "cutie pie" as being 9 ounces of cocaine - that's wrong. A "cutie pie" is another street word for "QP" - or quarter pound - which by my calculations is 4 ounces or a little more than 113 grams. Yeah I know...I know a little too much about the drug game. But hey, I'm from the streets, too.

 

What's with this "sending someone to Vegas?" Anything in that story give anyone the impression that Garber went to Vegas? He may very well have, but if he did, it's not like he got any great scoop by being there seeing as how it wasn't evident.