"Editing" a story

I'll take it a step further: Don't sweat anything written on deadline, especially on a prep football night.

Having been on both sides of it, both sides have to cut corners. Your desk will bail your ass out as many times as they piss you off.

Have you hugged your desker today?

 

Both ledes sucked, but not every story is War And Peace.

And listen to my man, Zeke. Always take time to thank the desk. They'll bail your ass out more often than not.

 

Write high school games as if no one knows who won, so early details are important. That said, changing one ho-hum lead for another? I would hope the desk has more captions to check or scores to chase.

 

I think that's the case with all gamers, though. Write as if you're telling your buddy at the bar what happened. It doesn't matter if it is a high school, college or professional game.

 

I have a personal policy that I stop reading as soon as I see the first overused cliche. Cheese and humor I like, but cliches and sweeping generalizations about adages, rules of the game, etc. . . . . ugh. They elicit a guffaw.

Your desk tried to do you a favor, and instead replaced on cliche with another. It's one story. You'll learn to write better leads as you continue.

 

They both blow.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I'm young and trying to improve. I do appreciate the copy desk, I just would have appreciated a call from them so I could know why, since both openings were sub-par at best, mine was changed.

 

I will say that there should have be a discussion between you and the desk about the lede. That said, you should have probably called after edition locked up. Then you and the copy editor would have had some time to talk about the change and time to collaborate on something better.

 

you probably don't put another score before the final score in the lede, though, do you?

 

Well, if you're young and trying to improve, you shouldn't be "pissed" about the change. You should go and talk to the desk and see why they changed it. (I think I know why they did. Your lede was more than a little on the cliche side. And aren't all sports won in the end, not the beginning? Just askin.)

 

I don't know. Some high school Fridays this just isn't possible. It's way too busy on the desk. Ideally, any time a lead is changed the writer would be called, and on big games definitely. But I can see if it's a gamer on the inside or even out front on a smaller game how the desk would just rewrite and get it done and not be able to spend much time discussing it with the writer.

 

I talked to the desk today, the lede was changed because it was shit and it was too long. I can accept that, I just got pissed because I didn't know why it was changed. This is my first stop at a daily, so I'm not used to writing something and then seeing it differently in print.
Turns out, my reaction was probably worse than my lede. Two lessons learned, time to move on.