HanSenSE said:
sportseditorbob said:
It's my understanding this was after about 20 inches or so of copy were on the wire and they were in the rewrite process. His optional lead wasn't changed but instead he wasn't allowed to write it. A sports editor who was not at the game stepped in and wrote it instead.
HanSenSE said:
Are we talking about the NewsNow file, or the first writethrough? And how, in most cases, could be screwed up about "Pete Pigskin scored three touchdowns to lead Podunk past Smalltown 24-7 Sunday night" that would require someone not at the stadium to do the story?
Something's really not adding up to me. Obviously, there's more than a dispute over the tone of a simple gamer here. But at the same time, someone who wasn't at the game, and may not have even watched it on the tube, is writing the story under someone else's byline? Am I missing something here? Or does this happen often on higher levels of writing??
Yes, this happens all the time, at least at AP. I wrote hundreds of stories under other people's bylines for breaking news and sports, as they dictated in from the field. Some would dictate a lede, others would just dump their notebooks. The byline at AP goes to the person on the scene of the event, but it's usually written elsewhere, and usually by more than one person.
I can't tell you how many times I'd work with a staffer in the field, and then they'd come back to the bureau hours later to read what "they" wrote for the wire. But it was rarely an adversarial thing, and staffers always had influence on a story if they didn't like the lede or the flow.
Usually AP reporters get their best chance to "write" with enterprise, second-day stories or an AMer of a game story. But there's no time and way too many editors involved for a reporter to have the luxury of writing his or her own breaking news story at AP.
