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

As a former sports editor at a pretty big paper, I will give some tips about freelancing:

If you want to get some work at a paper in your area, it helps to be persistent. Don't call or email the SE one time and give up if nothing happens. You have to be persistent in the job, so be persistent in getting work.

The SE may have a pretty good stable of freelancers and doesn't 't need much help but then someone leaves or something pops up and the SE may suddenly be willing to take a chance on a new person. So keep checking back. If you have new clips to share, do so (if you are pretty now and proving you can cover a live event on deadline).

Stringing is not easy. Not everyone can do it. So don't expect an SE to welcome a newbie with open arms. If you really want to do it, offer to shadow someone and/or turn in a story on deadlione.

Let editors know if you are stringing the same event for other papers as well. Most probably won't care if you tweak the story for their needs. Some may not want you writing for a "rival" publication.

Don't try to hard to be cute at first -- no holiday ledes -- and don't write your story in chronological order. The first TD or run or basket is probably not the most important one.

 

If "Podunk High won the opening tip" is anywhere in the story, you're not working for me again!

Also not a fan of seeing which team hit the "lid-lifter" in basketball ...

 

Especially if you're covering Podunk College

 

...or anything else.

 

Holy crap. That's a story. I had coworker that was around 33 that covered a high school basketball game one night, went home and dropped dead on his living room floor. It can happen anywhere, anytime.

 

Those who have been around SoCal's Inland Empire probably remember Dick White, who wouldn't let a heart attack stop him from filing his gamer.

From his 2003 obit: A noted fan of prep athletics, White was covering Friday's Palm Springs-La Quinta football game for The Press-Enterprise when he went into cardiac arrest on two separate occasions shortly after writing his game story. ...

"He died doing exactly what he wanted to do," his wife, Sandy White, said by phone. "He loved prep sports. He thought they were the heart and soul of any sports department."

 

One of the writers at a suburban Boston paper dropped dead in the high school press box in the early '90s. A young guy, too, in his early 20s.

 

Haven't the indoor football and minor-league avenues for stringers dried up? Much simpler to run a brief or a "Staff Reports" gamer sent in by the team.

 

Yeah, that market is gone now, especially with AP putting out the automated minor league gamers.

 

A lot of papers are writing off the live stats as well.

Best story from the SID side. The local paper was shorthanded and the guy on the desk had to cover the minor league baseball team and our conference tournament final. He asked us to send quotes and we did just that...then he emailed and went "you expect me to write off play by play?" I laughed and sent the story i was going to anyway.

 

I find writing off the stats/play-by-play to be easy. I could get a gamer very similar to what I would write if I was actually there. Only things missing are the quotes and if there's a certain game atmosphere.

Though I get he was probably tight on time with his other game. Still, give me 20-30 minutes and I could crank out a gamer no problem with stats and quotes in hand.

 

My response was going to be "I do it all the time and I actually KEEP the play-by-play" but you're write MNgremlin, I respected the situation he was in and did my best to help out....