Univ. of South Carolina beat reporter, Greenville News

A job is a job, particularly in this economic climate, but this is a very bad newspaper. Greenville attempts to out-Gannett Gannett on every fad of the day. I'm sure Rick has many stories to share.

It's a shame because Greenville is a great area that deserves a better paper.

Be prepared to interview fans (preferably minority fans) for your game stories.

 

Greenville IS a great place to live, and the News isn't as bad as it appears. Some really talented people on staff and there is a general sense of quirkiness there

 

No one's denying they have some talented people. But they're mostly miserable talented people. Management has sucked the life out of the place years ago. It's not a fun place to work by any stretch of the imagination.

This is a place that once required EVERY story to have a black person quoted in the first five paragraphs because, as Pompano said, it tries to out-Gannett Gannett.

 

Magnum, wasn't that called "Real people, real stories?"

 

HO. LEE. SHIT.

Please tell me that's not true. Please.

 

It was minority -- not black -- but yeah, pretty spot on.

 

If I'm not mistaken, this is the place where a writer (maybe Scoppe) led his gamer of a Clemson-USC baseball clash this way.....
"Clemson scored four runs in the third inning and beat South Carolina 5-2 Sunday at Clemson.
Watching was Joe African-American.
"Why am I here? because I like baseball," Mr. African-American said."
game story continued from there as normal......

 

I'm with Wonderlic here.

Just out of curiosity, how did they handle that, in print, I mean?

"....Quote," said Joe Blow, who is black/Hispanic/Asian, whatever?

And they actually referenced someone's race/ethnicity no matter the issue or story? Because otherwise, how would anybody know for sure about it, anyway?

I was always taught not to make a particular issue of this issue -- and I never have -- unless a story was about a certain ethnicity-related topic, or a culture, or unless an individual's race was somehow pertinent, and it was absolutely needed for the sake of information, perspective or context.

 

That wouldn't surprise me. Gannett's "Real People, Real News" is real crap.

 

MU is right. I meant minority, not black.

And the practice is a combination of the Real People, Real News and mainstreaming initiatives. The editor did it because he was tired of reporters tacking irrelevant minority sources at the bottom of stories, which usually meant the source would get cut altogether if the story was too long. So then everyone had to find and put a minority in the top 5 graphs.

But wait, there's more. To ensure that the minority voice was actually pertinent to issue stories, reporters were then required to find a minority expert.

And no, their race was not identified in the stories, which as Wonderlic pointed out, made the practice even more pointless. A reader would have no way of knowing whether James Brock, a professor from UCLA was white or black. Nor did they understand why the paper didn't have a local expert (because there wasn't a local minority expert).

It's a good example of how the management there spends too much time trying to follow policy and not enough time making sure there's good journalism being done.

In fairness, I understand they no longer mainstream, but only because Gannett no longer requires it.

 

It's a great beat but covering it from Greenville? That just doesn't make sense. It tells me there is more to that gig than covering USC. Ironcially, I had my own experience with the Greenville News as a bureau reporter in Anderson County. I lasted all of three months and it literally drove me out of the business for 12 years. The top management of that paper was awful. Sounds like it still is.