Rick Maese on Adam Schefter

[lcjjdnh]

Contains plenty of material meriting discussion on the Journalism board:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/adam-schefter-is-nfl-reporting-machine/2014/09/02/93e009f2-32cc-11e4-9f4d-24103cb8b742_story.html

 

[JimmyHoward33]

Good read, thanks for posting

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

It was a good read. But I don't know if it's healthy, mentally or otherwise, to want to work that much. I don't want that job, anyhow.

 

[playthrough]

It was a good read. But I don't know if it's healthy, mentally or otherwise, to want to work that much. I don't want that job, anyhow.

Yeah, reading that you haven't taken a vacation with your family since a four-day honeymoon seven years ago isn't a badge of honor to me. It's just sad.

 

[podunk press]

I went to college to be a sports writer.

I joined the college newspaper. I had two co-workers there who worked six, seven days a week, almost never slept. Their only friends worked at the newspaper. The only parties they attended were at the newspaper office.

After about a year of sizing up the competition, I knew I was never going to make it. Was I a good writer. Yeah. Did I enjoy the job? Yeah. But I wanted so much more out of life than writing, traveling and writing some more.

So I chose to get out of the journalism business. I'm happily married with lots of friends, a few hobbies and a job that (usually) gets me home by 6 p.m. I genuinely enjoy my life. I'm not rich. But that's OK. I have everything I need.

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

But that's not for me.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

It was a good read. But I don't know if it's healthy, mentally or otherwise, to want to work that much. I don't want that job, anyhow.

Yeah, reading that you haven't taken a vacation with your family since a four-day honeymoon seven years ago isn't a badge of honor to me. It's just sad.

It is sad. I think being in the autumn of life and wishing you had more fun would be about the most terrifying thing there is.

 

[Fran Curci]

This a very nice secondary nut graf:

Schefter attended zero games last year and rarely talks to athletes face-to-face, yet he’s the reporter who keeps beat writers up late at night, the most prolific news-breaker in America’s most popular sport. As the NFL season prepares to kick off Thursday night, According to Adam Schefter has become a phrase every football fan knows all too well.

 

[Dick Whitman]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

 

[Steak Snabler]

I imagine Jay Glazer's MMA workout yesterday went something like this:

[jab-jab-jab]

Sources!

[jab-jab-jab]

Sources!

[jab-jab-jab]

Sources!

 

[boundforboston]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

I'm not sure when that changed. I've heard Peter King doesn't attend nearly as many games as he used to as well, probably because he does the Sunday Night stuff.

I knew Schefter pretty well when I was still a reporter and I never saw anybody work harder. Nobody was close, not in any sport.

He's consumed by it. He's was like this when I met him almost 20 years ago and he has never slowed down. That's what I don't understand. Nobody goes at the same pace at 47 that they did at 27, but he's the exception.

 

[Craig Sagers Tailor]

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

That's the thing. Schefter is married with a kid. How he manages to make that work is far beyond me.

 

[Steak Snabler]

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

That's the thing. Schefter is married with a kid. How he manages to make that work is far beyond me.

The kid's not his and his wife is a 9-11 widow, so his wife is probably willing to put up with a lot.

 

[Songbird]

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

That's the thing. Schefter is married with a kid. How he manages to make that work is far beyond me.

The kid's not his and his wife is a 9-11 widow, so his wife is probably willing to put up with a lot.

This will sound insensitive, but that is a great start to a sentence, the entire sentence to a novel.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

That's the thing. Schefter is married with a kid. How he manages to make that work is far beyond me.

The kid's not his and his wife is a 9-11 widow, so his wife is probably willing to put up with a lot.

This will sound insensitive, but that is a great start to a sentence, the entire sentence to a novel.

Pretty sure he had another marriage annulled, sometime in the 1995-96 range. I don't know specifics, it was just the second time I knew of a non-celebrity getting an annullment.

 

[Dick Whitman]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

You're right, of course. But seriously, there is very little to be gained as a reporter from covering football games. There's no pregame access. Postgame access is choreographed to an inch of its life. (This was college football, but we weren't even granted access to coordinators. Players who played poorly were never made available, either.)

I see a lot of posts here from young writers looking to break in who discuss what events they have covered, and even after years of this, I looked forward to those three hours on Saturday. I admit it. But they should repeat this mantra every day in the mirror: Adam Schefter does not go to games. The sole reason a lot of people want to go into this business, and one of the best around does not partake in it.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

You're right, of course. But seriously, there is very little to be gained as a reporter from covering football games. There's no pregame access. Postgame access is choreographed to an inch of its life. (This was college football, but we weren't even granted access to coordinators. Players who played poorly were never made available, either.)

I see a lot of posts here from young writers looking to break in who discuss what events they have covered, and even after years of this, I looked forward to those three hours on Saturday. I admit it. But they should repeat this mantra every day in the mirror: Adam Schefter does not go to games. The sole reason a lot of people want to go into this business, and one of the best around does not partake in it.

Of course, you have to go to games for 25 years to get to the point where you don't have to go anymore.

 

[Dick Whitman]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

You're right, of course. But seriously, there is very little to be gained as a reporter from covering football games. There's no pregame access. Postgame access is choreographed to an inch of its life. (This was college football, but we weren't even granted access to coordinators. Players who played poorly were never made available, either.)

I see a lot of posts here from young writers looking to break in who discuss what events they have covered, and even after years of this, I looked forward to those three hours on Saturday. I admit it. But they should repeat this mantra every day in the mirror: Adam Schefter does not go to games. The sole reason a lot of people want to go into this business, and one of the best around does not partake in it.

Of course, you have to go to games for 25 years to get to the point where you don't have to go anymore.

I think that's less true of football than the other sports, though.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

"Attended zero games."

But access!

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

You're right, of course. But seriously, there is very little to be gained as a reporter from covering football games. There's no pregame access. Postgame access is choreographed to an inch of its life. (This was college football, but we weren't even granted access to coordinators. Players who played poorly were never made available, either.)

I see a lot of posts here from young writers looking to break in who discuss what events they have covered, and even after years of this, I looked forward to those three hours on Saturday. I admit it. But they should repeat this mantra every day in the mirror: Adam Schefter does not go to games. The sole reason a lot of people want to go into this business, and one of the best around does not partake in it.

Of course, you have to go to games for 25 years to get to the point where you don't have to go anymore.

I think that's less true of football than the other sports, though.

Maybe. I know quite a few NFL beat writers who rarely watch practice, show up just in time for the end so they can pull an assistant GM to the side and the next thing you know, those of us who were standing there taking roll and seeing if there were any changes in the lineup, would get our asses kicked because that writer was working the phones.

Schefter wasn't like that though. He was always at practices when he was covering the Broncos. He'd be the guy in the custom 3-piece suit while everybody else was standing around in shorts and T-shirts.

 

[Steak Snabler]

ESPN has an army of NFL reporters who can watch practice for the minutiae. Information guys likes Schefter, Mortensen, etc., are better served working the phones.