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dumb reporter anecdotes

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by writing irish, Mar 20, 2007.

  1. SCEditor

    SCEditor Active Member

    Didn't happen to me, but a friend told me this story once. A local TV guy is filming a high school football game and is asking my buddy questions every 30 seconds. So a kid breaks off a 52-yard run and the TV guy turns to my buddy and asks, "Was that from Team A's 52 or Team B's 52?"

    My pal, needless to say, was at a loss for words.
     
  2. Chad Conant

    Chad Conant Member

    OK. This one actually happened. You really can't make this shit up.

    I'm covering a prep football game in my first fall out of college. Game is borring as hell, ends up 6-0. Go to interview the visiting coach, who insists on talking by the bus because he's not even taking his players to the locker room a quarter mile away.

    I get two questions in and the guy from the crappy smaller semi-daily comes up, sits his notebook on a car next to the bus, drops his pants and takes a piss right there. The coach and I stare at each other in disbelief.

    When he's done, dude forgets to ever ask a question. Just takes a piss and lives off my interview. Guy might still be at that paper.
     
  3. markvid

    markvid Guest

    Maybe he was used to shooting CFL games.
     
  4. Corky Ramirez up on 94th St.

    Corky Ramirez up on 94th St. Well-Known Member

    WNBA finals a couple of years back.

    Credential requests needed to be in well before the finals began. Well, it's Game 2, the first one at home (back when they did best of 3). TV reporter either didn't know or didn't care that he was supposed to have WNBA Final credentials, which are different than the ones for the regular season. Needless to say, they're not letting him in.

    "I'm so-and-so from this TV station, and I need to get this story!" he's yelling. No one's helping him out. So he starts looking for people with important-looking passes to help him.

    Goes up to this one woman with an important-looking pass. "Ma'am, can you help me? I need to get into this game and no one can help me."

    She just happened to be the Governor of our state.
     
  5. Corky Ramirez up on 94th St.

    Corky Ramirez up on 94th St. Well-Known Member

    And some from my paper.

    Had a sportswriter I swore just asked questions to hear his own voice.

    "Bill, can you cover this game at 6?"
    Bill: "Is that a.m. or p.m.?"

    Also have this news reporter whose voice is louder than Ted Williams. And her interviewing style is so god-awful it's like nails on a chalkboard when she's on the phone. Of course you can hear it no matter where you are.
     
  6. The following exchange was paraphrased...

    I like the story from a few years back, when Kathi Bennett was coaching Indiana's women's hoops team in the halo neck brace and during the NCAA tournament a reporter asked her, "so, how many hours a day do you wear this thing?"

    "Um... all of them?"

    "So you don't take it off."

    "No."

    "Not ever?"

    "It's screwed into my head!"
     
  7. Wonderlic

    Wonderlic Member

    I was covering a playoff soccer game a few years back and - I don't even know how it came up - but this television reporter/cameraman starts arguing with me over the spelling of the one team's name, which was named after, allegedly, the town this guy "grew up in."

    Now, I'm fairly new to the area, so there's no reason why this guy should be wrong about how to spell the name of this town. Especially if he grew up there. Nevertheless, I'm stubborn, and damn sure I know what I'm talking about.

    So he gets angrier and angrier, and more and more animated, and he whips out his driver's license to prove his point ...

    And I'm right.

    Dumbass. ::)
     
  8. McNuggetsMan

    McNuggetsMan Active Member

    I worked at a small daily where the news reporters had to split the night cops duty. My friend had Thursday nights. She looked ahead on her calendar and saw that Christmas fell on a Thursday that year. It was nearly impossible to get your cops night off because the city editor was lazy and wouldn't reschedule people when you went on vacation so it was your job to find a coworker to take your cops shift.

    She is complaining to me about how much it is going to suck to work on Christmas, blah, blah, blah. So I say, yeah that does suck and you will have to work Thanksgiving too.

    Her response: "Shit! Thanksgiving is on a Thursday this year?!"
     
  9. boots

    boots New Member

    Don't know if this qualifies but it was funny. A black reporter from a competing paper was with me in the infield of a track and field state championship meet. The guy was doing his job, talking to a coach when the meet director runs up to him and demands to see his press pass. He showed the pass and asked the director, "By the way, did you check (my) pass? The director said "No." The black reporter promptly told the meet director that the next time you start checking credentials, you might want to start with the person closest to him.
    I started laughing and the director turned red as a beet with embarrassment.
     
  10. markvid

    markvid Guest

    Good for him.
     
  11. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I have heard of attorney generals referred to as generals before. Not by a reporter, though.
     
  12. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    What happens if the Surgeon General is really a Navy admiral? What would you call him? General Admiral?
     
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