SID stories on the front page

[spadjo martin]

The paper should use the AL.com method -- slap a byline on the school release. Then it looks like the writer was everywhere. Hell, they could put down overtime. "But boss, I was at the Podunk U game this morning and East Podunk U's game in the afternoon. I have the bylines to prove it."

 

[Batman]

The paper should use the AL.com method -- slap a byline on the school release. Then it looks like the writer was everywhere. Hell, they could put down overtime. "But boss, I was at the Podunk U game this morning and East Podunk U's game in the afternoon. I have the bylines to prove it."

After our paper was bought a couple of years ago, word came down that the new corporate overlords were counting bylines as they tried to figure out who to keep and who to cut. The ME at the time was unhappy with everything about the sale (mainly that they were about to lay off half the building) and told us to start putting bylines on everything we wrote -- normal stories, call-ins, briefs, you name it. Literally everything.
It was tournament season for college baseball (late May), which is a low ebb for local sports around here, but we typically gather the material and write our own stories. It was a joke for a few days that I was the busiest guy in the newsroom because I somehow covered games in Birmingham, Houston and our own town in the same afternoon.