Golf coverage in the new newspaper world

Yeah ... like Zach Johnson gave anyone an inkling he was going to win the Masters that week.

 

That's how you localize the story when you're not there.

If you get caught in the Zach Johnson scenario, don't expect teh guy to give phone interviews after each round. If it happens, praise the lord, but by no means count on it as a plausible coverage backup.

 

Well, yesterday I covered a high school golf tournament (stringing) for pay (kinda, sort of like anyone "kinda" gets paid in this business). No pros involved.

As for doing stuff for free, at the first paper I worked at we got credentials for a guy who did it just for the creds and to do a column. He paid his own way there and everything. As a full-time writer he wasn't much of a threat to me, and I sure as hell didn't "hate" him. I don't recall us sending him to the Masters though.

I, for one, live right around the corner from Reliant Stadium in Houston and would probably take on a Texans beat pro bono under the right circumstances....if anyone deserves to be hated, it's the clueless people who are and have been running the industry into the ground. I know a lot of people who contributed stuff to newspapers for nothing. Big freakin' whoop. Most papers' ownership would pay absolutely nothing and not put out a product at all (not even a low-quality one) if they could ever find a way to profit of it, and they've been trying to get as close to possible.