Who here has mailed it in before?

At 7 or 8 p.m., under normal deadline circumstances, good enough should never be good enough. But we've all been there.

I prefer to get to that point about 10:45 p.m.

 

Got to say, in 20+ years, I've never mailed it in or cut a corner.

Probably why I'm half-crazy in these years.

But that was what I was taught: You never cut corners, you never mail it in, whatever. You always do it right.

It has definitely led to some nice fights over the years. But I wasn't the one saying the corners had to be cut.

Lost many a fight, will never get the corner office with the water view. But I took pleasure knowing that I was standing on journalism rules, newspaper rules, whatever -- not that corporate shit they wanted me to buy.

I say do the job right, whatever it takes to do the job right.

You'll always regret it -- and remember it -- if you don't do the job right.

 

Conversely, our writers are mailing it in on a regular basis these days. Misspelling names of high-profile stars, gettting the stats wrong, filing late and filing long.

We're just pushing copy on the desk these days. That's all we can hope to do, what with the deadline and staff contraints. Don't like it, but it's the New World Order.

So we would hope that our writers might have the brains -- and, more so, the professionalism -- to give us copy that has names spelled right and statistics on the mark also.

Don't blame the desk if that basic stuff is wrong.

You're the writer. Write right, please.

It's not that hard if you would just maybe look some stuff up once in a while.

Do your job right. Your desk deserves knowing that you know how to get your facts straight.

Especially when you continue to file two hours late.

So thank you for that also.

 

wow.

 

Why "wow," TP?

Just wondering. Same thing everywhere else?

 

two hours late? damn. Those guys should be getting the boot.

 

Worse than that, actually. No one ever cracks down on the writers. It's chaos waiting for their gamers.

Game can finish at 4:00, and the gamer comes in at 9:30 or 10. Because no one tells them that the drill is to file the gamer within an hour, the write-thru with quotes an hour after that.

Unbelievable that we don't have any rules for our writers. No one in management ever calls them on anything. Don't know why, either.

 

Girls high school basketball tournament, two mediocre teams with losing records, winner gets to be cannon fodder in the district final and regional opener, teams are struggling to get over 10 points in any one quarter, second game of the night .... 15 inches plus box, please, and your deadline is 40 minutes after we originally estimate the game will end.

Write PBP during the game. Write lead (basic summary, 18 words) while they're in the locker room after the game. Interview coaches. Quote here, quote there, quote there. Boxscore. Spellcheck. Copy and paste into e-mail window, press send. Ten minutes to spare.

 

If writers did all that, then what would you do all day? I mean, how many times can you update your fantasy football team?

 

If your gamer is two hours late and nobody has been told that it's coming late, you should be canned...

 

Waiting for a writer to bitch about the time when a desker "corrected" something into an error.... 3...2...

 

i've sent (late) baseball gamers before the final out even touched leather. it doesn't take a genius.