Card game columns?

[spikechiquet]

Is having a bridge column viable nowadays in the paper? Do enough people play it to warrant a column still?
Our paper runs Phillp Alder's everyday and I hate checking it for errors...because I don't know jack about the game.

Without doing much research, is there someone that maybe does a cribbage or euchre column instead?

Heck, if there isn't and someone wants to hire me...by all means, fire me an e-mail!

 

[Versatile]

Your paper still has a news hole for a bridge column?

That's pretty remarkable.

 

[Small Town Guy]

Not sure about papers, but oh for the olden days, when Sports Illustrated wasn't a shell and delivered the hard-hitting, in-depth stories.

 

[spikechiquet]

Your paper still has a news hole for a bridge column?

That's pretty remarkable.

Oh yeah, right next to Dear Abby, the Suduko puzzle and Bulletin Board items...the first page I pound out in our B section.

The main reason I bring this up is because a reader complained to our ME that sometimes the graphic that goes with the bridge column is wrong.
She point-blank told him there would be no way anyone in the newsroom would know if it was right or wrong because none of us play bridge! He was pretty pissed I guess.
Hopefully he took his heart pills that day or I may have had to write another obit.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

The Times will run one as long as the Times exists.

Believe Goren lasted in SI through the late '60s. Subject to correction, there.

Game enjoyed two huge surges . .. the late 20s/early 30s (Ely Culbertson, et al), and the 50s/early 60s
(the Era of the broad popularity of the Goren point count). Game isn't as popular as it was, but it remains enormously-popular among certain niche elites (wildly popular on Wall Street . . . Buffett''s been a huge player, forever). Contract bridge (the conventional moidern version) remains one of the great card games ever devised.

 

[Gator]

Your paper still has a news hole for a bridge column?

That's pretty remarkable.

Oh yeah, right next to Dear Abby, the Suduko puzzle and Bulletin Board items...the first page I pound out in our B section.

The main reason I bring this up is because a reader complained to our ME that sometimes the graphic that goes with the bridge column is wrong.
She point-blank told him there would be no way anyone in the newsroom would know if it was right or wrong because none of us play bridge! He was pretty pissed I guess.
Hopefully he took his heart pills that day or I may have had to write another obit.

I think we work at the same paper ... we have all of those. And Family Circus, which sucks.

 

[SixToe]

Jeffy and PJ do not appreciate your tone, at all.

 

[spikechiquet]

Jeffy and PJ do not appreciate your tone, at all.

Who said that?

Notme!

 

[Stitch]

My old paper ran the Adler column. I don't think anyone checked it since production did the comics page.

 

[Bob Crotchet]

At our paper, the bridge graphic has the pub date printed on the bottom right. If it matches the date on the column, I figure we're good. Not that I'd have the slightest idea if it was wrong.

 

[HanSenSE]

At our paper, the bridge graphic has the pub date printed on the bottom right. If it matches the date on the column, I figure we're good. Not that I'd have the slightest idea if it was wrong.

One place I worked, not only did we have one of the syndicated columns, we also had a local bridge column, written by some grand master or whatever the equivalent in bridge is. The one person who could ever get the grid right, since it had to be done by hand, was the newsroom clerk, and it all went to hades when she left to student teach. At least he was patient enough to explain how it should look when she left.

 

[Canuck Pappy]

My hometown paper had a syndicated bridge column and a local bridge column in the 1970s and 80s. I would check the local column to see the standings because my Grade 4 teacher played.
Maybe I'm misguided but I always thought it was a waste of space that was read by only 20-30 people. But maybe youth sports copy and roundups is only read by 20-30 people as well.

 

[albert77]

When I was in high school, a bunch of us on the debate team (don't laugh ::)) played bridge almost every day at lunch, and I got pretty good at it. My folks were always in a bridge club, and I'd sometimes fill in when somebody didn't show, if I didn't have anything else going on.

It's actually a great card game that requires a sense of strategy and a good memory. I'd be willing to wager that anyone who's been caught counting cards playing black jack at casinos started out as a bridge player, because that's one of the skills you need to be good at bridge.

 

[SeanKennedy]

Yep. If we don't run the column, readers get unhappy.

It's not in sports, though.

 

[mpcincal]

We run it too on the Dear Abby/crossword/horoscope page. And, yes, our graphic does have the date on it, so it's easy to check.

The annoying thing about Alder's column is that, most of the time, he'll lead off with a quote from some famous person and he'll make an extremely awkward segue into the meat of his column, and they almost never work. I always joke with my deskmates that he has the Barlett's Quotations book right by his keyboard.

 

[Rhody31]

Jeffy and PJ do not appreciate your tone, at all.

Who said that?

Notme!

Notme was such a punk-ass *****.

 

[93Devil]

Google Earth says this is ****ing bull****.

But this is really funny.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Google Earth says this is ****ing bull****.

But this is really funny.

FC is the rare long-running feature where the best satires are ALWAYS 10X funnier than the subject creative.

 

[reformedhack]

A few years ago, I had a great conversation with two nationally syndicated cartoonists (Mike Peters and Tom Armstrong) who lived in our metro area. They and some local B-list standup comics were participating in a local charity golf tournament (Comedy for Cancer, or something like that) and with them was the head of King Features Syndicate, which syndicates their strips as well as Family Circus.

It was a very light-hearted chat after their 18 holes, lots of laughing, and the four of us were sitting in the clubhouse, having a few beverages. A few of the comedians were hovering on the periphery, listening but not participating.

At one point, the King boss mentioned Family Circus. I turned to him and said, "I know why Bil Keane draws his strip in a circle."

The guy from King said, "Oh? Why?"

I moved my hand in a diagonal line and replied, "So people reading at home can draw the international 'no' slash through the middle of it."

He did not laugh.

On the other hand, Peters and Armstrong nearly coughed up their Arnold Palmers, and a few of the eavesdroppers let out small chuckles.

I smiled at the King guy and apologized, saying it was just a small joke. He nodded and smiled, and the conversation resumed.

Just sharing one of the cooler moments in professional life ... making professionally funny people laugh.

 

[I Should Coco]

Our paper also runs Adler's bridge column, on a page with Dear Abby, horoscopes, a Soduku puzzle, and of course ... "Celebrity Cipher" (you know, where my handle would be something like M Vecpwg Zczc)

Also, without giving away too much, my previous shop ran this syndicated poker column once a week in the sports section: http://www.luckydogpoker.com/

Not sure how much we paid Mr. Lucky Dog, but it definitely had regular readers.