Today's nitpicking question: datelines

You cannot take a call-in and put a dateline on it. You're lying to your readers.

The other day I saw an out-of-state dateline on a story that quotes its sources as "said on his cell phone." :

 

My alma mater also has its own post office and zip code, and my mailing address was Micropolitan Guy, PO Box 1306, University of Douchnozzle, insert state here, followed by the zip code.

And part of the campus is in the city of Doochnozzle, the other half is in the country of Assclown.

But the dateline for on-campus events said Douchnozzle, not University of Douchnozzle.

As far as what Stanford does, screw them.

No dateline unless you're on-site writing the story (or covered the event and then drove back to the office in another city to write).

 

so if you cover a giants game in person at the stadium in n.j. then write and file a feature/sidebar/whatever from your hotel in n.y., what dateline would you use?

 

If you cover a game at Giants Stadium the dateline is East Rutherford, N.J. There is no discussion of this point.

 

ROOM 548, YONKERS HILTON -- Tiki Barber talked too much today.

 

AP's gone back and forth on it. And good luck finding a consistent style statewide. We still use UP as the dateline.

Boston College is another one that falls in this realm. Alumni Stadium is on land in two municipalities at least. It may be three, although I don't think any of the stadium itself actually lies in Newton. Hence the "Chestnut Hill" dateline, even though Chestnut Hill isn't an incorporated community.

 

University Park is not an incorporated borough or township.

Technically, Beaver Stadium and the Jordan Center are not in State College borough; they are in College Township or Ferguson Township, if you wish to get nitpicky. (I don't carry around a Centre<cq> County, Pa., atlas, so I couldn't tell you where the border falls.)

 

beaver & bryce jordan are in College Township

 

Another problem I've seen: with Wake Forest University games. WFU is nowhere near to Wake Forest, N.C., which is a real city. WFU is in Winston-Salem, N.C. Tricky, tricky.

 

we always just go with municipality, no exceptions. just to be consistent

at my first paper, i just started, and I picked up a detailed local map to sort everything out

was covering a HS football game and saw on the map that the field, right across the street from the high school, was actually not in the same municipality as the high school but in a large bordering township. there were cops from both at the game, so I asked them and they confirmed that, yeah, Portboro High School 's football is actually not in Portboro but in Groversfield Township.

i datelined Groversfield Township and got yelled at by my SE. he changed it. too confusing

screw confusing. how 'bout being correct?

 

At the Super Bowl several years back, all of the media events were taking place in Fort Lauderdale that day, but our desk was insisting on a Miami dateline. We all filed Fort Lauderdale datelines and all were changed.

 

I don't know if this is legit or urban myth or what, though I'm pretty sure it's real: Apparently Wake Forest used to BE in Wake Forest. Recruiters would sell prospective students on the beauty of the WFU campus ... by taking them to Duke. Then when they were admitted and headed for school ... YOU GOT PWN3D.

I think there's a Bojangles in Wake Forest now.