Photogs vs. writers, sideline vs. press box

As I head out to the Thanksgiving Day football game that I have to cover, and expecting to be stuck in the middle of a steady downpour for most of it, I'm thinking about an ongoing debate I have with our photo editor, who, as it happens, is shooting the game I'm covering this morning.
He tends to resent it when writers are in the press box when it rains. Because he is on the sideline in the rain, we should be, too.
Over the past few years, when the weather has been agreeable, I've been on the sidelines, but I've gone into the press box when it rains. Seems that paper tends to get wet and useless in the rain.
But out of consideration for our colleagues in the photo department, that shouldn't matter. We should be out there with them, never mind that we won't have any useable notes after the game.
Should we have to do something we really don't have to do simply because someone else has to do it?

 

No. You go to where you can best do your own job. If that happens to be the sidelines, so be it. Don't go there just because the photo editor says so.

Look at it this way -- he would resent the hell out of you telling him where he should be standing and how he should be taking his pictures.

 

How old is the photo editor?

12?

 

Yeah. Beat him up, take his lunch money and tell him to do his job and you'll do yours...

 

Tell him you resent it that you'll still be working hours after the game when he just has to transmit his photos...

What a jackass...

A good photgrapher, who understands what we do is gold, but sadly, there aren't many of them in this business...

 

I was going to say the exact same thing. If he wants to be able to work in the press box, tell him to go back to journalism school.

And now that the industry is digital, for the most part, photog's jobs are that much easier. No souping film, no light tables. It's download, crop, send in, then go to the bar to wait for the writer.

 

Ask the photog why it's called a PRESS BOX?
Also, I like to be in the middle and higher than field level so I can see the entire field.
I know some writers like to be on the sidelines, I like the angle from the pb.

 

Which is why photographers, more than writers, should be worried about their place in print journalism. Digital cameras and programs like Photoshop are getting more inexpensive and user-friendly every day.

 

how are you supposed to play computer solitaire, check e-mail and post on SportsJournalists.com from the sidelines in the rain? the photog obviously doesn't have a clue.

 

Memo to photogs:

Just spell the damn names in the captions correctly, and don't use nicknames (CWebb, Zo, Fins) that make it useless when I try to do a search for your photos.

 

I was at a 10K recently, and when I started there was a photog. Within three months the photog was kinda phased out and I was handed a camera and told to shoot my own stuff. Word from the publisher is that shop was one of the last in the chain to have an actual photographer. That seems to be the only job being eliminated faster than editorial. I wouldn't be so uppity if I was a photog.

 

What a jerkoff. Tell him to kiss your ass. Loudly. Or at least, while you're up there in the press box, look at him and give him a big ol' smile.