Stretched-thin folk: How do you deal with no overtime?

One of those "beloved" SEs, I bet.

 

Yes. A very good man. But that doesn't make covering middle schools a wise editorial decision.

 

I suspect if the OP tries to implement his plan and breaks down his hours, the bosses are going to say what others have said: Why are you spending all day at a track or wrestling meet?

As for the other stuff, shared copy, because you can't cover every game. Hit the first quarter of a basketball game for a standalone photo, and run to another school for a gamer and a few photos.

I have a question about the time it takes to layout a section. Does 3 1/2 hours seem a lot of time for a three-page section for two people? Or 35-40 minutes to crank out a story? You can write a decent gamer is 20-25 minutes.

I could write them in 15 minutes when I had to deal with early deadlines on Friday night. Write as the game went on, go down to the field for interviews after the game and finish the story in the parking lot where a could latch on to someone's open Wi-Fi network.

 

Little hard to write a gamer during the game when you're keeping your own stats and taking your own photos.

 

This.

And since I've found that worrying about writing the girls' gamer distracts me too much when I'm covering the boys' game, I don't worry about it. I write two short stories when I get back to the office. It's not like I'm making deadline anyway when I have to write, layout and edit the photos by myself anyway (Deadline's 11 p.m.).

The managing editor's not going to complain much. That would be because I've been interim managing editor, too, for nearly a year now.

 

Eh, 35 to 40 minutes for a gamer seems pretty acceptable to me. That is roughly what it takes me to finish one on a local college basketball team, and normally, there are still a couple guys left in the room with me. And your example of 15 minutes isn't actually 15 minutes, since you're still writing as the game goes along, and interviewing some people. I also think you tend to force yourself into a narrative with that, and if things suddenly change in the game, you're kind of effed.

Case in point - I was covering PC vs. South Florida on Saturday. With two minutes left, PC went up 13, and they had been coasting with an 8 to 15 point lead most of the second half. With 1:30 left, they had a 9 point lead. With 36 seconds left, it was six. And at the end of regulation, the 200 words I had already crafted went out the god damn window, because South Florida had tied the game, forcing an overtime, and they eventually won.

 

Yes, I found their time estimates to be pretty much on the money...one trick I'll do when possible....they play boys and girls doubleheader basketball back-to-back, so if I'm at one of those, I'll take the laptop, find a quiet corner and write the bulk of the girls game during the break in between, then wrap it up at halftime of the boys game...that leaves me with one gamer to write when I return to the office.

Back in the day part of the job was waiting between events, but no more...seems now we need to find something to be actively getting our section out with every spare minute. And that is possible now that most of us are on laptops.

 

That's a great way to get your point across if you're trying to tell your boss you're too stupid to know what events are important and which are not.

Plan accordingly...if hours are going to be tight skip the quarterfinal round so you can be there for the semis and finals...if they lose in the quarters you can call the coach, put in a recap and fill the space with something else.

 

Take photos early. As for stats, use the official book. You don't need to track everything, especially if you are stretched thin. Points, free throws and team field-goal stats. A lot of papers don't even run rebounds or assists for preps.

 

On those nights I didn't shoot much past halftime, and if I saw something during a timeout that was a really good photo then I stopped shooting right there. ("You got 4 pics? That's all?" "You want me to make deadline, right? Okay then.") And if your laptop has photo-editing software, do your photos at halftime.

Also: consider using a short lens on your digital SLR to take a picture of the official book after it's totaled rather than writing everything down. No scribbling errors that way.

 

They can have my overtime, but I'll be cold in the ground before they take away nacho time too.

 

That made me laugh.
Working with schieza, our biggest issue is management works 40 hours and our main paper's editor uses all 40 of his to lay out three newspapers, which doesn't really add up under my numbers.
Additionally, we have full-time news reporters who get four or five bylines a week and still chalk up 40 hours weeks, which would be fine if we weren't doing more stories and laying out three sections each.
I'm very excited for our winter meet season, when we have indoor track, swimming and wrestling all on the same weekend (track, wrestling, boys swim Saturday; girls swim Sunday).