'I Covered the Braves for a newspaper that didn't exist'

Got in the way? How so? Were they genuinely interfering with your work? I often admire the people who get away with relatively harmless shit that are begrudged by other people who don't have the balls to try it themselves. Not saying that's the case with you. But I work in corporate comms now and we do an internal newsletter that features an "Ask the Management" type section and I regularly get emails from people bitching about shit they see other people pulling off. I despise those people.

 

If the media relations guys had been around Atlanta long at all, they had to know. The Neighbor papers are little crappy weeklies owned by the Marietta Daily Journal, whose publisher regarded Atlanta as the back edge of Mars (unless it was to check up on local politicians to make sure they voted for the White Citizens Council agenda he demanded). No way in hell would an Otis Brumby peon belong at Turner Field.

 

Along those lines, the SEC likes to brag about a "record number of media" that attend SEC Media Days every year. The dirty secret is that they'll credential virtually anyone for that event.

Time was, you'd have dozens of Joe Fan types who were able to wrangle a credential from a 50-watt radio station in Clawhammer, Alabama, show up for the first day to get their stack of media guides (which they now only release digitally) and whatever the media gift was (usually a t-shirt or a tote bag), drink a half-dozen free Dr Peppers and then leave. Nowadays those guys usually hang around long enough to take a close up photo of Nick Saban getting on the escalator so they can post it on Facebook.

 

I haven't covered a major sporting event since 2004 and I've been out of the biz all together since 2009, so I'm sure things have changed in terms of security and how hard it is to get here or there (but maybe not). Anyway, I learned from very early on and my first credentials as a college paper reporter that if you act like you belong and know what you're doing you can get almost anywhere. A legal pad was my note-taking device of favor and with that and a pen seemed like no one ever asked me anything pretty much through the end of my career of event coverage.

I can count on one hand the times someone actually asked me to show a credential if it wasn't visible and the worst thing that happened to me is I covered a breakfast by a booster club of a major college football program where top coaches would come to talk and I actually ate the breakfast -- an editor told me to load up beforehand! -- and someone in charge wasn't very thrilled about that and let me know it but didn't stop me. I covered that breakfast a few more times but never ate again.

That said, I don't think I went anywhere other than a few high school games without an actual credential (and never had an issue getting into those). But it wouldn't surprise me if tons of people did this kind of thing at one time or another. Making up a whole paper, well, that's a little more of an effort. This guy is probably not completely alone, though. Like I said, act like you belong and you could at one time get into a lot of places. Maybe still can.

 

If by "Otis Brumby peon" you mean someone from one of the Neighbors, you are correct. As far as the MDJ is concerned, the amount of coverage of Atlanta sports depended solely on Otis' whim on a particular day. When I worked there (many, many moons ago), we would send people to cover the Braves, Falcons, Hawks, Georgia Tech and Georgia -- some of them even on the road -- until the day (and we all knew it was coming eventually) when Otis called the sports editor and yelled at him about wasting our resources on all that when we should be concentrating on local Cobb County stuff.

That would last until a big story broke from one of the Atlanta teams. Then the SE would get a call from Otis yelling at him about, "Why don't we have that story?"

Then the cycle would begin anew.

 

That was interesting. I have always loved reading and hearing these kinds of stories. There was some guy in the 1960s who was the king of sneaking into major sporting events. He allegedly once drove the pace car at Daytona. Jerry Green of the Detroit News swore up and down the guy helped carry Hank Stram off the field in Super Bowl IV. He apparently snuck in by wearing a red rain jacket and "escorted" the team bus into Tulane stadium and then just hung out on the sidelines. Then was brazen enough to help lift Stram.

 

I had my vacation for next year all planned until I saw I was going to have to drink Dr Pepper. Dammit!

 

I know people who do this shit now. Fans love to live our life for some dumbass reason.

 

Unless it's a different guy, the column linked below says it was Tom Landry after Super Bowl XII at the Superdome:

Bondy: Meet the notorious Super Bowl crasher who set his sights on NY

 

Pay's about the same.

 

Oh absolutely, although my impression is also that the MDJ has been much more "off" than "on" when it comes to Atlanta coverage over the last decade-plus.

 

They like the idea of going to games, getting good seats and eating hot dogs for free. That's 5 percent of the job at the most. I doubt we'll see any stories come out with the headline "I Snuck into a Newspaper and Designed Agate Pages, and No One Stopped Me!"