Walk me through a day as a typical reporter

Everyone says there's no such thing as a typical day and, while that's true to some extent, I still find myself falling into patterns with the seasons. It might go something like this for football season (these are all for preps reporters):

Football season
Monday
I usually take Monday off because it's the slowest day, but you could also do the following...
1) Before Noon - If at a p.m. paper, come into the office to help with production; if at a morning paper, sleep in.
2) 1-2 p.m. - Head to the office to figure out what you need to do for the day
3) 2-6 p.m. - Go out to schools to collect stats or just put in a few minutes of face time
4) 6-??? - Work on stories, or if at an a.m. paper help with production
Tuesday-Thursday
1) 11 a.m.-3 p.m. - Visit various coaches/schools to work on preview stories and features for the week
2) 3-7 p.m. - Write various preview stories and features for the week
3) 5-9 p.m. - Possible cover a softball game
Friday
1) 5 p.m.-7 p.m. - Head out to football stadium for game (depending on where it is and when it starts; I usually try to get there 20-30 minutes before kickoff)
2) 7-11 p.m. - Cover game, write story
Saturday
1) Sometime in the afternoon - Write a second-day story on previous day's game for Sunday or Monday's paper; Maybe cover a college game and repeat Friday night's routine

Basketball and baseball season...
Monday and Wednesday
1) 1:30-4 p.m. - Visit coaches/teams and sniff around for stories
2) 4 p.m.-8 p.m. - Write stories
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday
1) Noon-5 p.m. - Write any features or miscellaneous stories for the week
2) 5:30-11 p.m. - Cover a basketball, baseball or softball game

Depending on your paper's production schedule, there's likely to be some desk work mixed in between 6 and 12 a.m. or p.m. for an afternoon or morning paper, respectively (especially at a smaller shop). My paper also gives us Sundays off. Yours may not.
And, of course, that's an average week. If you stumble on to some breaking news, all of that goes out the window and it's Noon-midnight working on that particular story until it's done.

 

Ooops...forgot we were humiliating the newbie today :-[

 

Listen, there's no typical day. This isn't a cookie-cutter business. Are you traveling, trying to catch planes and cabs? Making phone calls to agents in your off time? Are you covering high schools, where you have a game to cover at night and you have the entire afternoon to screw around? Are you working in the office calling high school coaches? Do you work at home? Are you stuck in an office all day? Do you got to a pro team's practice one day and a game the next? Are you driving to West Podunk to talk to a karate instructor? Are you hanging around a practice facility waiting to talk to some ingrate athlete? Are you talking to some eager high school kids outside the local gym? There's no such thing as a typical day. You've gotta be more specific, I guess.

 

Well, I'm at a super small shop where there is a ton of design work in addition to writing, but I'll throw out my typical day:

2:30 p.m. - show up to work.

3-7 p.m.: Make calls for feature stories, hit up any practices I may need to get to, work any non-game stories I have planned, start designing 3-6 page section.

7-10ish: cover game, keep stats, explain to 32 JV parents why their kids aren't on the front page every morning, interview players/coaches,

10-midnight: write game story, type up box score, take a couple call-ins, write those briefs, finish designing 3-6 page section, copy-edit A-section pages and make sure everything is sent to film by 11:59.

12:00-12:30: Fridays, typically our busiest sports night, are also the night our Web site lady isn't working, so post stories, photos, any multimedia stuff we might have to the Web site.

Go home, drink. Watch Flavor of love or other bad late-night tv.

Rinse and repeat.

 

I'll echo the above. You might be working on three different features that week, as well. And, depending on when people are available for interviews, your day might start as early as 9 a.m. and end as late as 11 p.m. with downtime of varying lengths in between. Whether or not you make an appearance in the office is really up to you and your SE.

 

Dead on. Best way I can put it is, you'll end up working 40 hours, give or take, in any given week. You just never know when those 40 hours are going to be.
Monday might be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday might be noon to 5 p.m., then 7 to midnight. Wednesday could be noon to 3 p.m. Thursday's noon to 10 p.m. and Friday's 6 to midnight.

 

This is what I was really wondering, I guess. A lot of time goes in to covering things outside the office, and I'm wondering if most people work 40 hours a week in the office + covering games outside the office.

Thanks for clearing it up, Batman.

 

The schedule's a little different for longform journalism, slatter, but perhaps still relevant.

January: Have great idea for book. Misplace notes. Forget idea.

March: Recall idea in shower. Then forget that afternoon while trying to remember mother's maiden name during log-in to balance checking account.

June: Suddenly recall idea again while at lunch with agent when prompted by question, "Why don't you ever have any ideas?" Mention same. When agent responds "I love it," you realize for first time that book is impossible to research, write or deliver.

July/August: write book proposal. Make no mention of staggering narrative, artistic, practical impossibilities.

September: Sign book contract.

October: Begin

November: Begin again.

December: Christmas

January: 680,000, high score, Bloxorz, Addictinggames.com

February: Valentine's Day

March: All the other children are outside playing already. Why am I stuck in here?

April-October: Fiddle around.

November: Write book. Send as series of attachments to editor with email saying you thought you'd never get through it. Draining. Artistically exhausting. Spent in service of your muse, etc., so forth. Fail to mention new Bloxorz all-time personal high score now 47,765,432,198.

December: Christmas.

January: Have great idea for book. Repeat.

 

I want to work at this paper.

 

Each day as a typical reporter, I woke up.

Then I went downtown to look for a job.

Then I hung out in front of the drugstore.

 

1 a.m. Weep uncontrollably.

Go ahead and laugh. How do you get to sleep?

 

Adding to the fray...last year, I interviewed longtime national hockey writer at the major metro daily at which I'm part-timing. Here's a germane section from a two-hour transcript. Hope someone gets something from it.

* * *

“Well the standard procedure is to write running copy for one of the editions. I will lead you through a drill here on an average game day. This doesn't apply to high schools, because high schools are a day process.

On a professional beat, on a night game assignment, when you're writing game stories and notebooks, for instance, if the Mascots are playing at home, I'm at the rink by 10:30 in the morning. I'll cover the practice, talk to players, talk to a coach, talk to whoever I can talk to, and I'm gathering – the term in the business is 'gathering string': quotes and facts that I'm going to use – and again, the business is changing so dramatically – some of that I'm going to blog immediately, and get right out on the website. More typically, if you're talking about the business the way I did it for the first 28 years of my career -- go to the morning practice at ten o'clock, gather as much information as I can, and then I would produce a full notebook for the first edition, probably anywhere from 600 words to 800 words, and have that written anytime from the end of the practice at noon to the start of the game.

So that's written, that's filed, that's going into first edition. Then as the game starts, I'm going to write copy after the first period, after the second period, and I'm going to file that, so the desk is holding that now. This is called 'writing from the bottom up.' After the first, in essence, the desk is going to edit that, so the first period is going to be the bottom of the story. The second period is going to be the middle of the story. And then the third period, typically, you're writing as the third period is being played, and ideally, with two to three minutes to go in the game, you file a lead saying 'The Mascots won 5-3 last night,' even though the game hasn't ended yet. You've written it, you've filed it, and you hope – often against hope – you're talking to the desk as the final fifteen seconds are counting down and you say 'That's it, 5-3, see ya later,' and then you hang it up and that's what's in first edition.

So first edition is the notebook you wrote, along with the running copy of the first period, the second period, and the third period with the first top-off. Then it's back to the room, to ask those questions you think are germane, to look for an angle, to freshen up the notebook that you wrote for first, because in the first edition you said, you know, 'Johnny Leginjury might play, he may play' well he did, and we gotta talk to him. So you rush back, first priority would be now to write the game story from top to bottom, which means the first game story you wrote, the running game story that gets thrown out of the paper now. So now you will write a fresh game story, top to bottom, say 800 words, using quotes, using your own insight, all that. You write that top to bottom, usually you've got 35 to 40 minutes maximum to do that, file it, then go back, look at that notebook you wrote for first edition, and see what needs to be changed. Often, you have to give it a fresh lead, because you've got a sidebar angle that you want to lead the notebook with. And then you take whatever notes you want to freshen up and add information that you want to make sure gets in there.

So you're starting at about 10:30 a.m. when you got there, and these days you're usually you're leaving the rink these days around 11:30 or so, 11:30, quarter to twelve. In the old NHL, with typewriters, the Mascots started at 7:40, the game usually began, typically games would run three to three and a half hours long, so many nights the games ended at 10:40 to 11 o'clock. Then it's the same process that I just explained to you, in terms of knocking out the notebook and doing the story. So, most nights, in the old Arena, in the old world of communication, I left the Arena at about one. Anywhere from one a.m. to one-forty a.m.”

(Writer discusses work environment in the old days vs. now, then a lengthy discussion of writer's career. Interview ends with

I think any job in journalism is fascinating in terms of how you see people interpret what you do, or what their expectations are. There are so many people who think it's the job of the sportswriter to just show up and as soon as they drop the puck that night, they write a quick little something and go home, and it's a three-hour workday.

Well, the truth of the matter is, it's a string of interminable days, and you've really got to have a passion for it.

A real passion for it.