Part-timer horror stories

How the fuck does someone write 45 inches on college softball?

And I've given my share of shit to part-timers, but I guess I've been fortunate in that most of them are competent.

 

Hey! I had nothing to do with these incidents.

I did my damage when I was a full-timer

 

We're lucky. Other than the meth user, we've had great PTers. The two I have now are unbelievably good, and work hard. That's why I reward them with coverage assignments, because they like doing them and like being a part of the staff in that way.

 

I can't believe you (or anyone else) didn't suspect he was a druggie the day the pipe was found. Or did he claim he was sweating because of the kung pao?

 

You mean Namath was your part-timer?

 

When I was a part-timer, my SE would work 40 hours per week writing three in-town gamers and a column, and typically take the fifth day off. On the rare occassion that he'd do layout (because he hated being at the office late, but who can blame him?), his pages would be full of errors, typos and stories that didn't end. But that was always the fault of the copy editors, especially on those rare occassions when he'd actually let them check his pages. Usually he was running behind and could get them out faster without going through the copy desk. That's just because the deadlines were too early, though. And besides, he was the best on the staff at layout -- just ask him.

He would also write 35 inch youth swimming gamers, but I did learn the importance of writing a 14-inch gamer on the final prep football regular season game between the state's top-two rated teams, when he cut it down from 20. And, of course, I learned that as SE, his stories were untouchable. Apparently that's a rule everywhere, he taught me. I should have known 35 inches was a good read for a youth swim meet.

He also showed me that the best way to deal with newsroom problems is to scream and yell and cuss and berate until you get your way.





Oh, wait a second... you meant horror stories about part-timers, not from when you were part time? Oh, I'm sorry. Nevermind.

 

I'll take both kinds of stories, as long as they're good.

 

The pipe discovery came a few weeks before he started doing his lengthy disappearing acts.

It didn't take long from the point of when he started to disappear that we put two-and-two together.

 

Did you tell him you were unaware that butter could cut? ;D

 

Not a part-timer story, but one about a correspondent who eventually got hired full-time at several small newspapers (one after another) in our area. He was doing a high school football game for us, and it was a game between two bad teams. He comes back into the office about 10, writes his 6-inch story, then sits around and watches us work until we finish at 12:30. We proof pages, and get ready to walk out the door at 1 when he says, "Oh by the way, some kid at Local School broke his neck tonight."

After a moment of stunned silence, I asked him why he didn't think that important enough to include in his story or tell us.

His response: "I didn't think it was germane to the game."

For the next six months, "Oh by the way" became our catch phrase for any kind of bad news.

 

"The goddamn Germans got nothing to do with it!" [/sheriffbufordtjustice]

 

Yet more evidence of my conspiracy theory that somehow newsrooms force people to turn off their brains.

Is there any newsroom where the whole is equal to or greater than the sum of its parts? Surely people are not this functionally stupid outside of the newsroom. Yes?