Phone calls on deadline

solid.

 

I'm going to take the opposite opinion, here, and probably rub some folks raw. But that is not my intention.

You can't push yourself so close to deadline that a 5-minute phone call will cause you to bust it. Unless there's late-breaking news, a late gamer, the courthouse is on fire, etc., you should be ready to go WELL before deadline. 15 or 20 minutes prior to, you should be ready to hit the button.

That's the way I always played the game. Too many times I've been too close to deadline for comfort and something freaky happen -- computer crashes, printer system's effed up, score wrong on the front, etc.

 

When I'm putting together my section, I forward my calls to voice mail. I'm not in sports anymore and there is nothing that would be late-breaking, stop the presses type news for my section as a rule.

And I usually have my pages ready long before deadline, so if there was someone calling me with a 'gotta get in no matter what' item, I would still have time to get it in.

That being said, it sounds like you did just fine. Don't worry about it.

 

I try to do the same thing. When I had two full-time reporters, I required them to finish three of their five stories by Friday. I wanted to be able to get a head start on pagination for the next week's paper and not have to play the waiting game wherever possible.

Of course, if something late-breaking happens, it happens and you deal with it.

 

All that stuff's happened to me. The thing is, especially with newspapers having earlier and earlier deadlines, a majority of the sports news IS late-breaking news. There is only a small window of time for a sports section to be put out, due to a lot of the news happening at night.

Also, workload has a lot to do with why people need every minute to get the job done. Especially with less and less staff, you have people who are taking phoners, writing separates, then having to put out pages as well.

 

Ditto

 

I think you make a good point, Three bags. I always try to give myself some wiggle room. Most nights, its impossible.

Last Thursday, I covered a 5 p.m. baseball game and immediately drove to an 8 p.m. lacrosse game.

Got back to the office at 10 p.m. We actually have a pretty late deadline (midnight), but the time disappears when I have two stories to write, the sports front and an agate page to design and three or four call-ins to take. There was no 20-minute cushion possible. The pages got out right before the stroke of midnight, thank God.

 

Oh, but you should have written the baseball game at the lacrosse game, wrote the lacrosse game while driving back to the office, formatted the front page in 3 minutes, 42 seconds, knocked out the agate page in another six minutes and taken the phone calls in a span of five other minutes. Then, you could have spent the next hour and a half perfecting your ability to juggle with six hands, thus ensuring your position in the newspaper industry for years to come.



(I hope the blue font wasn't needed).

 

dude, that's so dreamlandia it's sick. my last gig replated like several times through the run to get breaking shit in the section during a 90-minute window. the city final usually had everything only by the grace of god -- especially if our teams were playing on the west coast -- and the outlaying areas received what we could get them. of course you think ahead, but you plan in advance of how to squeeze every last bit of shit in before the final horn blows.

 

What time is your deadline? I don't know about you, but 8 p.m. baseball games don't end at 10:30. We got 11:20 for first edition and it's a struggle every time.

Local copy is all set the front is set, but you can only do national pages so fast.

 

I'd have done what you did. Your job is to put out a paper, not be a receptionist for drunks.