Weekly Questions

A new weekly is opening up in our area, and I've got the fast track on a sports/photography position. It wouldn't be a fulltime gig, but it would definitely be some extra cash in my pocket.

I'm not all that familiar with the format, but I'm wondering how the transition would be from covering a bunch of schools to one and stretching that coverage.

Besides the usual, you write what they tell you to write, how much emphasis do you put on non varsity sports like JV and modified. Honestly, I really wouldn't mind putting their results in the round-ups and shooting some games, but JV and modified features? This frightens me.

I should add that my boss at this new venture would be pretty chill. Like former owner of a used CD store kind of chill.

I'm really out of my element here. Any help would be great.

 

Spend some time talking to virtually every varsity coach and get a sense of where their teams are, then do the same for the JV, etc., so you can get a real pulse of the school's athletics. The JV teams don't warrant a higher level of actual game coverage, but if they're feeding the varsity squads, it's certainly worth your while to provide weekly briefs, etc., and do some more occasional feature pieces on the lower-level teams so they don't feel neglected.

 

ask why they want to cover JV teams.

 

Focus on cheerleading and pom

 

Exactly. Those girls work so hard. They are so dedicated, and leaving them out of the paper would just crush them, you heartless bastard.

 

Do you realize how much this looked like "focus on cheerleading and porn?"

Good fucking God, I'd subscribe to that paper.

 

I thought the same exact thing.

 

Covering JV athletics, you gotta be shittin' me.

There should be at least 20 varsity programs at the school, with many overlapping. For example, in my neck of the woods, track, baseball, softball, tennis and swimming are in-season until the end of the school year. That's more than enough sports for a weekly's sports page.

And cheerleaders do work hard. So do the bat girls that hang out in the baseball teams' dugouts, performing absolutely no other function than wearing "daisy duke" shorts and giving all the baseball studs perpetual hard ons.

 

Shouldn't that be focus on the cheerleader's poms?

 

What's the difference?

 

I wouldn't know if they did. I'm just bracing myself.

 

Years ago, when I was working for a 1,500 circulation weekly, my boss had me go out and cover the middle schools. I was making $10 a story but almost got fired a couple weeks into the gig, not because my stories were bad (or any worse than would be expected from a kid just starting), but because I could not take decent high school football pictures, at night, with a point and shoot camera.