Notebook Peekers

you people have some odd pet peeves

 

I prefer the term Laptop Voyeur myself.

 

I guess I should clarify. The home arena for the team I cover (high-major DI college hoops) has no buffer between press row and the first row of the stands. So every game I need to get to my seat early and leave right at the buzzer in order not to get caught up in the mosh pit of fans walking to and fro.

THOSE are the idiots that are always trying to read over my shoulder when I'm on deadline. And almost every game someone has something smart to say or will reach over and try to tap my keyboard or grab stats or something. It's not that bad if I'm not on a tight deadline. But when I am it certainly isn't amusing.

I'm lucky in that I'm given more than enough room, and a better seat than any other media members just because I'm the lone beat guy. So I generally don't have other reporters in my vicinity when I'm writing, unless it's a big TV game or something.

 

When I called him on it, he said he was just seeing if my Internet was working because his was down.

Real likely...

 

We had an intern just come in crying because some source intimidated her into photocopying her notes for him.

I would love to punch that guy.

 

Ugh. What kind of source would that be?

 

I hate it when coaches grab my note pad and say, "How can you read this stuff? You can't read this. How do I know you won't misquote me? Let me see that."
Generally, I let the coach look at it for about 2 seconds before snatching it back out of their hands.
But it really annoys me.

 

Some manufacturing guy for a news story she was working on. Wasn't anyone that needed to protect himself, at the very least.

 

I had Tony Stewart do that to me one time at a dirt track event. Grabbed my note pad from my hand, "Can you read this?" me: uh, yeah. "holy shit." then he held it up to the fans circled around him "and we wonder we get misquoted so often."

Yeah, Tony, I'll misquote you....sure. Actually, it's more fun not to.

 

Ugh. What kind of source would that be?
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Some manufacturing guy for a news story she was working on. Wasn't anyone that needed to protect himself, at the very least.
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I'd probably be on the phone with him that day reaming his ass out for doing that. Frankly, I wouldn't care if that lost me a source. That's just a dick move plain and simple.

 

It's all about Tandys for me. I knew a Tandy TRS-80 voyeur. A coworker busted him scrolling through his Trash 80 at a Single-A game, trolling for info. Dude later got his comeuppance.

 

Some manufacturing guy for a news story she was working on. Wasn't anyone that needed to protect himself, at the very least.
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I'd probably be on the phone with him that day reaming his ass out for doing that. Frankly, I wouldn't care if that lost me a source. That's just a dick move plain and simple.
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well, I'm not in charge of the girl or anything, but our publisher did call the guy and tell him he's never getting in the newspaper again.