What's the worst thing your boss has ever made you do?

Some old-timer who was supposedly a local sports legend back in the 1940s died.

I was stupid enough to be in the newsroom later that day.

Managing editor sent me the obit, which was packed with the guy's athletic accomplishments, and asked me to fact check.

Was a long process. Took a few hours of searching through old microfilm and making phone calls.

I found numerous errors. Turns out the guy wasn't quite the superstar his family had claimed in the material it submitted for the obit. I listed all the mistakes for the managing editor.

He called the family, who screamed and cursed at him. Naturally, he transferred the call to me.

I was very sympathetic and compassionate, expressed my condolences for their loss, but explained to the son that over time, perhaps some of dad's accomplishments had been exaggerated.

The guy screamed and cursed at me, said i was disrespectful and a few worse things, and hung up. Then he called the managing editor back and I saw the guy talking to the son on the phone for a few minutes.

Then the managing editor comes over to me and says they're running the obit as is.

He says: "We just don't want to offend anybody."

I never spoke to that man again.

 

Two that I thought of from other papers I've worked at:

1. Local teenager dies in car accident. Next day, we hear on the police scanner that an ambulance is going to their house because the father collapsed, and they feared it was a heart attack.

My editor hears this, and decides to send me to the hospital to confirm that it was the dad who got sick (this is pre-HIPPA days) and see if the family could comment somehow. I balked, editor insisted, so I went.

I halfheartedly walked into the ER, told the first nurse who I was, was told that the family wanted privacy and that it wasn't nice that I was there (in different words, of course, not that I could actually blame her), and walked out. I spent a total of 30 seconds there. I went back to the newsroom, told the editor that I wasn't allowed in, heard him bitch and moan, then went to cover a game.

I know some journalists may ream me for not being more aggressive, but frankly, I felt that there was a big difference between knocking on someone's door at home, and trying to get into an ER room.

2. At my first weekly, I, like many beginners, worked many unpaid hours of OT. One week, my editor gets call from local bar, which is having a charity volleyball tournament that Saturday, starting at 11 a.m., and wanted coverage. Editor tells me about it and I call the bar to confirm the date and time. I tell the editor that my girlfriend was coming to visit, but that I would go to the beginning of the tournament, take some pictures, talk with a few people, and leave and spend the rest of the day with my girlfriend (and this is on my day off, with no OT pay, mind you).

That Saturday, I arrive promptly at 11, to find no volleyball net set up, and two people in the bar. Bar owner tells me that they changed the time to start at 4 p.m. When I ask why I wasn't notified, she replied, "well, everyone knew that the time was changed." (I guess I wasn't part of everyone). I told her that I had other plans at that time, and that I wouldn't be able to cover the event, and that she was welcome to submit photos, list of winners, etc.

That Monday, I get a call from both my editor and the paper's publisher. Bar owner is extremely upset that I didn't return later in the day to cover the event. I told them that I wasn't notified of the time change. Editor tells me that while they were wrong in not notifying me, that I had still committed to covering the event. Publisher wanted me to personally APOLOGIZE for not being there. I refused, and pointed out that I wasn't getting paid for that day, and that if they wanted me to change my plans, then I should be notified in advance.

Eventually, we agreed that I would just interview the bar owner on how 'successful' the event was and took a picture of woman with the winning trophy. And I never did apologize, and I left a few months later for another gig.

 

Fuck. That. Shit.

 

After the death of a big-time athlete a few years back, I called a local guy who had been his college roommate to get his reaction to the death.

He asked me to call back in 20 minutes.

I asked why.

"I didn't know until you told me. I need to go cry for awhile."

I hang up the phone feeling like shit. I turn to one of the other writers and said, "I feel like the biggest asshole on the planet..."

Then our night editor screams at me for letting the guy off the phone.

The other writer leans over to me and says, "I don't think you need to worry anymore about being the biggest asshole on the planet..."

 

I'm not saying the first example is the greatest story or anything but sometimes in this business you have to intrude and as unpleasant questions. It really is part of the job.

So if the local high school coach gets busted for drunk driving, you going to beg off calling him?

 

My publisher tried to get me to sell ads.

Needless to say, I refused.

 

That trumps anything I've been asked to do...

 

Buying ads would be worse though. ...

 

I once had an SE who wanted us to put datelines on stories and columns when he was elsewhere with his girlfriend watching the games on television.

I refused. Eventually the EE caught on, asked us, we confirmed it and the SE got a royal ass-chewing.

 

I know of a SE at a major paper who pulled his beat writer from the World Series because his beloved hometown team was playing and he wanted to cover it himself.

He had his first byline in more than five years and hadn't covered a beat in almost a decade. Major news happened the whole time he was there and he missed all of it... Or was at least late on all of it.

 

Was it George C. Jordan from The Berkshire Beacon??

 

There's just a bit of difference in a high school coach getting arrested and a family who just lost a child, and had a parent hospitalized, and your editor wanting you to sneak into the ER to try to interview the family. Hospital wouldn't confirm the dad was a patient there (citing privacy reasons).

This was also a small-town paper where everyone knew everyone. The small scrap of information that I would have received if I had been more aggressive would have paled in comparison to the amount of vitrol that I would have received in the town. I understand at big-city papers, a reporter may have to do whatever he has to do to get the story because there are a lot more sources available. But at small-town papers, sometimes it's best not to burn bridges for the future. That's what I thought my editor was doing by trying to get me to sneak into the ER.