"Keep this exclusive"

Both, actually. The biweekly had the story that she was being stalked, dry, factual and from the police reports. The daily had the longer feature story with quotes and incidents from the athlete.

For a couple of years, the reporter at the biweekly kept her voice mail on his answering machine. For someone who did a lot for her career, the athlete sure forgot her roots.

 

This.

 

Exactly. It's one reason I still enjoy talking about the time I covered the NCAA women's basketball tournament's games at Comcast Center. The reason? Even though I was at a small weekly, the guy who was the boss of the SIDs gave me a seat at center court, right next to a guy from one of the big papers.

I may have worked for a small outlet, but they didn't treat me like it.

 

I don't specifically ask them not to talk to the competition. But if there's a good piece of enterprise I'll ask if anyone else is working on the story and will say that we can give the the piece a better ride if we're first with it. I'd never ask a PR person to go back on an interview with an outlet that he or she has already given -- you can put the genie back in the bottle. But PR people know that my shop will play the hell out of a good enterprise piece that we're first on, and that we'll spike an enterprise piece if our competiton runs it out there first.

 

I was in an all-area meeting with writers from several papers once and someone asked if we could agree to embargo the list until a certain day. The one writer from a major metro said, 'I'm going to run it tomorrow' and kind of smirked about it. He's a guy I've grown to respect since then, but this really rubbed me the wrong way. When the major metro needed my help later on, let's just say I was less than forthcoming. One good professional courtesy turn deserves another.

 

Best interview I've ever had with a "big name" was once when Tim Brando came to speak to a high school scholar-athlete banquet. I wasn't sure what to expect, but figured I'd get at least a quick five-minute interview. We ended up talking for at least 20 minutes about all sorts of topics. It didn't matter that I was just a preps writer for a small-town daily, he treated me like I was a national columnist for the New York Times.

 

A few years back, I was freelancing for a daily paper (about 40K) and had started an auto racing page. I was doing a big story about racing in the Northwest, and was covering the Champ Car race in Portland. On a whim, I decided to try and get Jimmy Vasser, still a big name at the time. Jimmy's PR guy misheard me and thought I was with The Oregonian (somewhat close in name, but not in size) and called Jimmy over. When Jimmy was almost to us, I mentioned to the PR guy the right name of the paper. But by then it was too late for him to back out, Jimmy was already there. Part of me wondered why I corrected him since I didn't want to lose the interview, but I also wanted to be ethical. If the PR guy had heard the name of the paper correctly in the first place, my nickel's bet is the guy would have blown me off.

 

I agree. Being at weeklies twice in my career (including now) I've held my breath more than once, hoping the competition (both daily and TV) doesn't get to scoop me. But I'm not going to ask for an exclusive. If I'm pretty certain the competition will get the story before my paper hits the street, I'll post something on our website first. If the source offers to hold off on telling others, that's fine.

 

Shame on the group for not determining a run date before the meeting; if major metro pulled this shit, they aren't asked back.

 

Ah, such is the curse of being at a small place.

It never fails that every fall, our small weeklies cover all of the local football teams from their first practices to their final game. At least one of our eight teams seems to find a way to get to their respective championship game and, once that happens, it's hard as hell to try to get the first interviews with the athletes we've covered all season because, suddenly, the big daily paper actually gives a shit about them and/or the TV guys think it's OK to just blow right past the small-time guys waiting for someone to finish celebrating.

It's a great moment, though, when the local coaches turn to you first because you've been there from the start. Always makes me smile a little bit.

 

Slappy ... I've got a similar situation at the small daily I'm working at now ... kid who the paper covered (and somewhat glorified) over the years from middle school through high school (where he became a first-round draft pick his senior year), and kept up with through his climb up the minors made it to the big show last September, and we find out about it first ... well, we try to get in touch with the guy through all possible means (the ballclub, his parents -- who even give us his cellphone number -- and even his GRANDMOTHER) and he totally blows us off, absolutely refuses to talk with us ... he's even ignored messages passed on to him from the big-boy paper's beat writers, and requests from the big club's PR guys and the PR guy on the Triple-A team he's with this season ...

 

BB, I don't think you should be mad at the big paper for trying... although, without knowing what the story was, I'm usually never in favor of holding the news.

It reminds me of when I worked for a smaller outlet, and I was working on a semi-investigative piece... and I'd been working these people to do an interview for months.

Then I get a call from a producer for a larger outlet, which I readily take, stupidly thinking they are interested in hiring me. We start talking about mutual colleagues, friends, etc. Then he starts pumping me for information on my story! I abruptly end the call with something like, "I've been working on this for 3 months. This is my story." Probably sounded like a 2-year-old.

I was mad for awhile, then I thought, wait a minute. He was just doing his job, trying to get information. Can't blame him for trying. Didn't work, but whatever.

And I don't think you can blame the big city paper for trying to make it exclusive, even though it didn't work.