Today on Stringers Gone Wrong ...

[dixiehack]

An elementary school teacher who also freelanced for her town's tiny weekly newspaper got popped for showing up pickled at a city council meeting.

Alabama teacher and newspaper freelancer arrested for drunkenness at City Council meeting

 

[Riptide]

An elementary school teacher who also freelanced for her town's tiny weekly newspaper got popped for showing up pickled at a city council meeting.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 

[Kayaugstin Kott]

Cue joke: "Have you ever been to a city council meeting?"

She must have been pretty damn drunk for it to be noticed. Maybe after the meeting she asked a question and she was slurring/smelling, then the police didn't want her driving.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

She was charged with "possession of prohibited liquor?" Is that a dry county?

 

[spadjo martin]

I'm told it is a dry county.

 

[MTM]

If being drunk at a council meeting is a crime, I know a few council members who should be jailed.

 

[dixiehack]

Cue joke: "Have you ever been to a city council meeting?"

In that same county. (And yes, Franklin Co. is dry.)

 

[Ace]

I remember one stringer -- maybe he was sober -- who covered a high school football game and turned in about 6 inches of terrible, error-filed copy on deadline. We had about a 10'' hole for the story.

I was trying to work with it to make sense of it, make it accuarate and fill the hole. I called him back to ask if he had any more information, stats, quotes or something to add to the story.

The only quote in there was the coach saying something like, "We played hard."

He said, "Yeah." Then he reeled off a lengthy quote off the top of his head.

I assumed he was making it up on the spot -- otherwise it would have been in the story -- and didn't use it. Never used him again either.

 

[Bronco77]

Cue joke: "Have you ever been to a city council meeting?"

I've been to a few -- for most of them you'd need either alcohol or large quantities of caffeinated coffee to survive.

The last one I went to was quite entertaining. When I was hired for my previous gig as an assistant metro editor at a medium-sized daily, part of the orientation during one of the first few weeks on the job was to accompany the beat reporter to a commission meeting in the largest city in our circulation area. That city was notorious for bad government, and the beat reporter told me the meetings often were nasty. Wasn't long before the meeting degenerated into a vicious free-for-all with plenty of name-calling and finger-pointing. It was a good thing food wasn't being served there -- otherwise, there would have been a re-enactment of the famous scene from Animal House.

 

[swingline]

In that same county. (And yes, Franklin Co. is dry.)

It was my understanding when I lived in Kentucky that "dry" only meant alcohol couldn't be sold there, not that possession or drinking in your own home was illegal.

 

[dixiehack]

It was my understanding when I lived in Kentucky that "dry" only meant alcohol couldn't be sold there, not that possession or drinking in your own home was illegal.

Unless she lives at city hall, that doesn't apply here.

 

[Bamadog]

I remember one stringer -- maybe he was sober -- who covered a high school football game and turned in about 6 inches of terrible, error-filed copy on deadline. We had about a 10'' hole for the story.

I was trying to work with it to make sense of it, make it accuarate and fill the hole. I called him back to ask if he had any more information, stats, quotes or something to add to the story.

The only quote in there was the coach saying something like, "We played hard."

He said, "Yeah." Then he reeled off a lengthy quote off the top of his head.

I assumed he was making it up on the spot -- otherwise it would have been in the story -- and didn't use it. Never used him again either.

I always had good luck with stringers for the most part. When I was a sportswriter in Florida, a high school kid approached me at a game and told me he wanted to write sports. We hired him and found him to be both a lifesaver and a great writer who took correction in stride.

At my first shop as SE, where I was the lone full-time gun, we had three stringers. One was a librarian, the other was a college student who now works for Bus Cook (Brett Favre's agent) and the other was a guy who dropped out of high school and lived with his parents. All three were wonderful writers, better than a lot of full-time folks who just did it for some extra money and fun. The last I mentioned is now an SE at a smaller paper.

If you find the right stringers, life is great. You just have to vet them very carefully and be patient with them and their copy. Plus, not showing up drunk is likely a plus.

 

[Ace]

I always had good luck with stringers for the most part. When I was a sportswriter in Florida, a high school kid approached me at a game and told me he wanted to write sports. We hired him and found him to be both a lifesaver and a great writer who took correction in stride.

At my first shop as SE, where I was the lone full-time gun, we had three stringers. One was a librarian, the other was a college student who now works for Bus Cook (Brett Favre's agent) and the other was a guy who dropped out of high school and lived with his parents. All three were wonderful writers, better than a lot of full-time folks who just did it for some extra money and fun. The last I mentioned is now an SE at a smaller paper.

If you find the right stringers, life is great. You just have to vet them very carefully and be patient with them and their copy. Plus, not showing up drunk is likely a plus.

This guy was actually a newside reporter who was stringing/working for sports. He was terrible.

Most of the ones who lasted more than a month were good.

 

[Bamadog]

This guy was actually a newside reporter who was stringing/working for sports. He was terrible.

Most of the ones who lasted more than a month were good.

It's always a mixed bag with stringers. I guess I've just been blessed to work with some great ones. News guys doing sports is always comedy gold to me, especially the ones who make fun of us as the "toy department."

 

[Bud_Bundy]

My favorite bad stringer story is the day I was sitting in the media room at the local LPGA tournament. This guy somehow gets access to the room, sees our paper's namecards and asked me if I was the sports editor. Told him no, I wasn't, but the SE would be out later. He said he had called the SE about doing some freelance stories for us at the tournament. I told him, no, we were just using our staffers for the tournament, no freelancers. That's when he pronounced himself better than anybody we had on our staff. (During that stretch, we won the Triple Crown, a bunch of APSE top 10s and a bunch of other awards). Fast forward to fall and we took him on as a stringer for prep football. Before his first game, he was instructed to call us with the score after each quarter and file his story by 11 p.m Come Friday night, no calls .... we tried to call him, but the never answered. We never got a story, either. Our ASE reaches him early the next morning and the guy said: A) He didn't think it was right to answer his phone while the game was going on and B) he would have his story to us by 11 a.m. So much for that stringer ....

 

[daytonadan1983]

The day I turned down Newsday to write an A-Rod rehab story because I already had commitments at NBA Summer League was my last great freelancing moment.

Outside of high school football and the occasional Magic game, freelancing is not worth the drive time anymore.

Hell of a run, though. If you ever hired me, thanks for putting up with me.

 

[HanSenSE]

It's always a mixed bag with stringers. I guess I've just been blessed to work with some great ones. News guys doing sports is always comedy gold to me, especially the ones who make fun of us as the "toy department."

Oh Lord yes. A neighboring paper would rotate reporters every now and then, where, say, a sports guy would cover business for a few weeks and someone cityside would try sports. Sports guys kicked ass wherever they worked, of course. But after a couple of very bad gamers on the local minor league team - stuff you wouldn't even want to put in your high school paper bad - from metro writers got into print, I sat by one of their regular sports guys at an all-star football game and asked about it. He told me "you should have seen the raw copy" and shook his head.

 

[Bronco77]

News guys doing sports is always comedy gold to me, especially the ones who make fun of us as the "toy department."

My favorite experience with a news stringer covering sports was the one who was assigned to a high school softball game out of desperation and took gender neutrality to an extreme, turning in copy that referred to the "first base person" and "second base person" (at least one news copy editor I worked with also was known to make those types of changes when she occasionally had to handle sports stories).

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Only bad stringer we had was a our dirt track guy. He came in and offered himself to the SE, because of the "lack of coverage."
He did two, maybe three stories. They were essentially the same stories and interspersed with double-entendres for dicks and sex.

 

[Ace]

My favorite bad stringer story is the day I was sitting in the media room at the local LPGA tournament. This guy somehow gets access to the room, sees our paper's namecards and asked me if I was the sports editor. Told him no, I wasn't, but the SE would be out later. He said he had called the SE about doing some freelance stories for us at the tournament. I told him, no, we were just using our staffers for the tournament, no freelancers. That's when he pronounced himself better than anybody we had on our staff. (During that stretch, we won the Triple Crown, a bunch of APSE top 10s and a bunch of other awards). Fast forward to fall and we took him on as a stringer for prep football. Before his first game, he was instructed to call us with the score after each quarter and file his story by 11 p.m Come Friday night, no calls .... we tried to call him, but the never answered. We never got a story, either. Our ASE reaches him early the next morning and the guy said: A) He didn't think it was right to answer his phone while the game was going on and B) he would have his story to us by 11 a.m. So much for that stringer ....

Telling a person at the paper that you are better than any writer at the paper is a pretty good indicator that the person lacks st least a half-dozen skills necessary to do the job.