Sports editor: Your day

Get to fucking work, Ace!

 

Making coaches E-mail everything in sounds good, but in practice it doesn't always work the best, at least not for us.
Some of our coaches E-mail, but we end up having to retype things anyway because they don't send it to us in the same form that print it, they use ALL CAPS FOR EVERYTHING or everything is in lowercase, etc.
And I'll take a fax for something like cross country or track over phone calls any day. Nothing like spending a 15 to 20 minutes on a phone getting the agate for a big meet.

 

Again, you gotta use technology to your advantage. A coach sends something in ALL CAPS? Open it in Word, select all and change the case. Presto. Coach send something in an Excel spreadsheet? Export as a tab-delimited text file and it's set to flow into your page. Presto. Covering the same players over and over? Add their names to the spell check library.

My advice for you, ISE, is to approach your bosses and ask for a list of priorities. They are the bosses. That is their job. It is within your right to ask for that list.

Ask them which teams/schools are most important. Ask them when an away event trumps a home event. Ask them to determine when an away event is "out of radius" (50 miles? 100 miles? 200 miles?). Ask them when it's OK to tell a coach "your results are not on time, nor are they in the right format, so they won't appear in the paper."

Once you get your list, start plotting to get yourself a laptop. Don't just tell your bosses "I need a laptop." Do the homework. Find a few options that are best in terms of price, function and durability. Make a suggestion, and find a place that has it on sale. Make it so all they have to do is say yes.

Finally, does your paper have any "sister papers" in the area, or other small papers with which you can strike up an agreement? If you can't make it to Podunkville to cover grade school games, is there a reporter there who could send you some notes and a photo? You may have to return the favor in the future, but it's worth it.

 

I cannot stress how important paragraphs 2 & 3 are for anyone, but especially when you're a one-man band and there really is no one to hear your ideas and goals.

 

Thank you everyone for the encouragement you have given me. You all have given me several steps to work with the upper management on many issues, but the problem I feel is that I already know what they're going to say. I do love to idea when it comes to having them list priorities, that way I can have them in writing, so to speak.

When I accepted the job I did accept the fact that grade school sports were part of their "Coverage". But I know I didn't sign on to do it all by myself.

 

I have been fortunate to work for folks like this.

 

I think it's a real good idea to have them put what they want into writing, or you do it and make sure that's what they meant.

The one thing you have to fight sometimes is when the higher-ups feel that's unnecessary. And then you need to dig your heels in the sand and tell them, yes, I deem it necessary.

 

Knowing what someone is going to say (or thinking you do) is no reason not to ask.

As a reporter, you should be used to asking questions you know the answer to. And I bet that you are surprised sometimes.

 

There's no question I'll say something, but I've always said that you sometimes have to ask the questions, even if you already know the answers.