the apocalypse is upon us, errr me

Unfortunately, most places I've worked got really pissy when I went out and dealt with people face-to-face instead of making a phone call and saving them the cost of mileage and time spent driving.

 

That would be cool if someone did a random feature and found the Zodiac.

"So do you have any interesting stories about yourself?"

"About 37 from the 1960s...do you know cryptography by chance?"

"Uhh..."

 

This may be totally out in left field based on my bitterness and cynicism and overall disdain for the media, but allow me to explore the possibilities here.

Recently, my state's high school league sanctioned bowling as a championship sport like football, cheerleading and underwater acrobatics, the latter being hyperbole.

I did a feature on a few nearby schools that formed teams as soon as the league announced it was going to sanction the sport. In the course of doing that feature, I spoke with a bowling "center" proprietor (formerly called "bowling alleys").

He had no qualms telling me his business had gone down the tubes since the mid-1980s due to a lack of interest in bowling (for whatever reasons). He said the national bowling congress began pushing new marketing ploys designed to attract new bowlers, and taking it to high schools is part of their marketing campaigns.

So just doing simple internet research, I found out that the bowling congress was quite aggressive in implementing its campaign. They're hellbent on the "sport's" resurgence from little interest today to the way it was back in the 1940s and 1950s after soldiers returned from WWII with a pocketful of money and little to do.

With that in mind, it's possible some local bowling alley proprietors gave your publisher kickbacks to get bowling crap in the paper. Again, this could just be my cynicism here. I don't know your publisher, but in general, publishers are out to make a buck at pretty much any cost to their or their newspapers' integrity.

Bowling alleys in my neck of the woods are always calling in high school results and league results, etc. I have noticed, however, that they seldom, if ever, advertise in the paper.

 

If you were lucky, you'd get Boots. Boy, would he have a story.

 

There was a guy who worked for CBS who would blindly pick a city in the United States (not Charles Kuralt). Then, he would randomly select a name out of the phone book.
He'd do a detailed story on the person.
The reporter always came up with interesting stories.

 

At former stop, paper did a series of stories of people who had famous names. Remember stories on Ben Franklin, Joe Montana and even Homer Simpson. It worked out pretty well, especially the people who were willing to dress for a photo in the style of their namesake. This went on for the better part of a year.

 

The first one to do this was indeed from Idaho -- David Johnson, he works (worked?) at the Lewiston Morning Tribune -- and his only rule was that he could never reject an interview. Whatever he found, he had to write about it. He landed on some great offbeat and moving stuff: a professional whistler, a man who had the largest crop of marijuana plants in the state, a man who just learned the day before that his son had been killed at war. I remember seeing a 60 Minutes piece about him years ago. Sounds like it was pretty effective.

 

Not a bad idea ... for the features section ... but cute, nonetheless. I'd read it.