What was your best day in journalism?

[Jake from State Farm]

I was in Clearwater and Jacksonville in the 80s. It was a great training ground. Lot of good papers, lot of good people. Lot of good things to cover.

 

[MileHigh]

We did something similar in 1997 in Fort Lauderdale, perhaps the biggest single live sports section I've ever worked on.

World Series section. College football section. Regular sports section.

Came in at 180 columns of editorial space. The equivalent of 30 open pages. Ah, the days of 50-person sports departments.

As a desker I never had the enjoyment of beating anyone to a story. But coming up with a centerpiece idea on a Friday during the home NFL team's bye week and making it work was highly satisfying.

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Mine was 2001, 30 miles south of you. The Marlins win the World Series at Yankee Stadium. College football section and regular section. I was the Sunday SE (it was a Saturday night). Think we had like 160 or 170 column inches. What a time.

 

[BTExpress]

I always say my career was 1986-2011.

Everything before and after is just picking up a (much smaller) paycheck.

Before 2011, my supervisors typically worked alongside me. They SAW what I did each night. They had my back. Fought for me. As the industry fell apart and the newsrooms shrank, all of a sudden supervisors were working 9-5 and I was doing my work surrounded by a bunch of empty desks. Nothing more than a name on a payroll sheet.

 

[daytonadan1983]

As a sports writer:
1998 Daytona 500: Dale Earnhardt finally wins the damn thing and I'm doing pits for the News-Journal and I pitch "Other drivers react to him winning" which gets a "good idea" from Godwin Kelly. Thing practically wrote itself and I drive out of the Speedway feeling good. Next day, Bill France is on ESPN and says "There was a great article about how the other drivers were happy he won...." ...That and when I saw France in person a few months later, he goes "Son I remember that story. It was a good one....

2009 Utah State wrestling tournament. The prep writer leaves at the start of the year, so management decides to hold off hiring a replacement for a few months. Fine by us stringers, more work for us. I wanted to take basketball, but assistant SE Jim Patrick says "We need someone who can handle a beat." Three months later, myself and two other stringers crush it with the coverage and coordinate with the desk on stat graphics and side bars. "That's why I chose you." Drove home with the same feeling I had at Daytona ....

AS A SID:
Bethune-Cookman vs..Nebraska. Best game I never went to. The game was added to the schedule late, and my boss asks me to stay behind. No problem, just have Scott Frost sign my Nebraska CD. So I stay in Daytona, work volleyball, tennis, basketball preseason and cross country with the "You didn't go to Nebraska? being said in appreciation. What really made it better is when the boss calls and says "I need a solid. Can you do a gamer? AD has me running around. So...using quote sheets and PBP, I do a passable game that wouldn't have been much different had I gone there, the photographer who we did send brings back great art and I get a prime rib dinner from my boss because I did my job as a team player ...and Frost signed my CD....

 

[playthrough]

Here are 2, as a writer and a desker:

WRITER -- March 1990: Hank Gathers dies on the court 30 feet in front of me at Loyola Marymount. I still retain vivid memories of Coach Paul Westhead running onto the court, turning to me and saying, "Chris, call 911." It took a few minutes for paramedics to show up. They needed to use a defibrillator but they didn't want to in front of 4,500 witnesses, so they used a gurney and hauled him out. That turned out to be a huge mistake. The game and the other that was supposed to follow were canceled. After that was a lot of waiting, wondering. I phoned Father Dave, the neighborhood clergy from Philadelphia who helped Gather, Bo Kimble and Pooh Richardson. He told me "I guess he's gone." That was the first we knew that Gathers had, indeed, died. I had it, nobody else did. But, of course, I couldn't do anything with it. I reached Stan Morrison, who recruited Gathers and Kimble to USC before he was fired. Got some comments from him.
We were instructed to go to the hospital, about 10 minutes away. I grabbed Jake Curtis from the San Francisco Chronicle and drove him. We got all the info at the hospital. I wrote the toughest story I'd ever written.
I filed near deadline and the desk told me that AP has been trying to reach me all night. I was a voter in their poll and releasing the poll was being held up because they didn't have my vote. Back then, it wasn't always easy to get Sunday night results. I went home to do it, about 15 minutes from LMU. And, I find out there is a power outage in my area and the electric gate to my parking spot wouldn't open. I finally got home and did the poll using a flashlight. Luckily the phones still worked.
I probably got more acclaim at work for this than anything I'd ever written.

DESKER -- October 2001. I'm night editor on the sports desk. Barry Bonds is trying to break the single-season home run record with 71. It's a Friday night ... a high school football night.
We had a columnist on the road tracking Bonds, and the Giants happened to be playing the Dodgers in S.F. We had prepared about 75 percent of a special section, where all we had to do was put in the news story, photos and captions, update some numbers and check to see if everything we'd done in advance was still correct. Bonds got the milestone homer by mid-game, but the Giants rallied and it became an 11-10 game, pushing it later and later into the night, and Bonds kept getting more at-bats.
We did a special section called OC Varsity every football Friday. We covered a ton of games.
Oh yeah, we had the regular sports section, too.

We put out three sports sections that night, all right on deadline and we weren't so late that all the bosses were pissed at us. I felt a great deal of satisfaction, the satisfaction you get for undertaking a monumental task and pulling it off.

They needed to use a defibrillator but they didn't want to in front of 4,500 witnesses, so they used a gurney and hauled him out. That turned out to be a huge mistake.

My goodness, I didn't know that. Who knows, but dammit every millisecond counts.

 

[ChrisLong]

They needed to use a defibrillator but they didn't want to in front of 4,500 witnesses, so they used a gurney and hauled him out. That turned out to be a huge mistake.

My goodness, I didn't know that. Who knows, but dammit every millisecond counts.

Gathers had collapsed during a game just before Christmas. He had all the medical tests and was put on meds. After that, LMU had a defib machine on their bench at every game and practice. I'm sure Gathers wasn't using his meds as ordered, especially on game-day, because they made him sluggish. In that situation, it's a hard call, defibbing somebody on center stage in front of an audience. One of the on-campus pastors was at the game suffered a mild heart attack because of the stress of the situation. But you have to do what is best for the stricken.
That was an unforgettable couple of weeks. LMU trouncing defending national champion Michigan is the greatest game I have ever seen at any level, and I covered lots of them.

 

[UNCGrad]

My god, these stories.

Y'all are awesome.

 

[Roscablo]

When I was out covering stuff, a lot of days were pretty cool.

The best actual journalistic thing happened very early for me when I was at my college paper. I always, always went by the basketball arena and sometimes the AD offices on the way home from classes. Some of it was taking advantage of the access I had as a reporter, some of it was the awesome openness of the AD at the time, some was it was a shortcut back to my apartment.

I covered the women's basketball team by choice. The first year I covered them they were ranked in the top five most of the season and ended up getting a No. 2 seed. Probably would have been a No. 1 but lost the conference championship game. Led by someone who now coaches the Las Vegas Aces. They lost in the Sweet 16 to UCLA in L.A. I got to go with a team of student media. If they had won, I think we might have run out of money before the Elite Eight game. That was my junior year. But I digress.

I kept covering them my senior year as sports editor. Most of the talent from the previous year was gone, but the coaching staff was great (there are at least three in the WNBA now in some form and another at a big power program) and they brought in an amazing freshman class. They were cruising, easily headed to another NCAA appearance. On one of my daily check-ins I went through the arena right as practice was over. Only reporter around (our local paper had a full-time women's beat then). And found out that the star freshman and really the best player on the team tore her ACL at that practice. The coach openly talked to me about it. Players too. And I wrote a story for the next day. No one knew about it until I put it out. Best scoop ever. The freaking local reporter didn't even know until arriving to the next game. I guess a college paper isn't worth keeping tabs on, but she had no idea. The next game was days later. Back then every paper in the area covered the teams, too, including the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News with beat writers and everything, and none of them had anything on it. And they still covered the team pretty fully, especially from the year before.

It's a little thing, maybe, but so awesome to me. In a bigger market or for a bigger program it would have been pretty big. Maybe more people would have been around if so, but still. That team slumped and didn't make the NCAA tournament as a result, but did go to the WNIT semifinals against Wisconsin, where I traveled with the team and the local reporter that was clueless and the Rocky Mountain News also went (man, what a different time in newspapers).

That now Aces coach also yelled at me on another trip home through the arena because I didn't understand the pressures of going pro and the draft process. She didn't get drafted but became one of the best WNBA players ever.

I might have peaked in college, but I had some pretty great other experiences covering crap for newspapers and beyond.

 

[Dog8Cats]

I was working in a unit that fixes people's consumer issues. I found out about a girl who had an issue with the power company.

She was 18 years old. She grew up in a wildly unstable house. Her mom was an addict. Her dad -- a one-time marginal MLB player -- was dead from an OD.

The girl had moved out on her own into subsidized low-income housing and was raising her 15 year old sister to get her out of her mom's home. The girl was working and going to school, barely scraping by.

The issue: the power company insisted that she had thousand of dollars in unpaid electric bills, and they were on the brink of cutting off electricity. She was 13 years old when those bills went unpaid. Her mom's boyfriend had used the girl's Social Security number to sign up.

The girl didn't have the money to pay the bill. If the power gets cut off in low-income housing you are immediately evicted. She and her sister were days away from being homeless.

To top it off, the girl was living with heart failure because she didn't have insurance, couldn't afford a doctor's visit and got kicked off the state's Medicaid system because they said her (estranged) mother's income put her over the threshold for coverage. (I left that part out of the story.)

And this kid is ****ing AMAZING. She had been speaking to groups about her dad's addiction and loss since she was 13. She was working her ass off to get by. She didn't even have a harsh word to say about the mom's boyfriend who used her SSN -- she shrugged it off, understanding that it was probably the only way he could get the power turned on in the first place.

So, I got the power company to erase the old debt, so she's in the clear. The girl is thrilled. She tells us now her goal is to save enough money that she can buy a car to drive her sister to school instead of relying on terrible bus service.

We aired her story and started hearing from viewers wanting to help.

We did a follow-up story where we surprised her with nearly a thousand dollars donated by viewers, along with a car donated by a dealership.

Off camera, I also got to tell her that I got her reinstated on the state Medicaid system and that a couple contacted us offering to pay for her to finish college.

When I retire, I suspect that's the story that will have meant the most to me.

This is No. 1 in my power rankings of stories in this thread.

 

[Slacker]

To top it off, the girl was living with heart failure because she didn't have insurance, couldn't afford a doctor's visit and got kicked off the state's Medicaid system

What a great story. Has she survived the heart issue? Where is she today?

 

[da man]

I was working in a unit that fixes people's consumer issues. I found out about a girl who had an issue with the power company.

She was 18 years old. She grew up in a wildly unstable house. Her mom was an addict. Her dad -- a one-time marginal MLB player -- was dead from an OD.

The girl had moved out on her own into subsidized low-income housing and was raising her 15 year old sister to get her out of her mom's home. The girl was working and going to school, barely scraping by.

The issue: the power company insisted that she had thousand of dollars in unpaid electric bills, and they were on the brink of cutting off electricity. She was 13 years old when those bills went unpaid. Her mom's boyfriend had used the girl's Social Security number to sign up.

The girl didn't have the money to pay the bill. If the power gets cut off in low-income housing you are immediately evicted. She and her sister were days away from being homeless.

To top it off, the girl was living with heart failure because she didn't have insurance, couldn't afford a doctor's visit and got kicked off the state's Medicaid system because they said her (estranged) mother's income put her over the threshold for coverage. (I left that part out of the story.)

And this kid is ****ing AMAZING. She had been speaking to groups about her dad's addiction and loss since she was 13. She was working her ass off to get by. She didn't even have a harsh word to say about the mom's boyfriend who used her SSN -- she shrugged it off, understanding that it was probably the only way he could get the power turned on in the first place.

So, I got the power company to erase the old debt, so she's in the clear. The girl is thrilled. She tells us now her goal is to save enough money that she can buy a car to drive her sister to school instead of relying on terrible bus service.

We aired her story and started hearing from viewers wanting to help.

We did a follow-up story where we surprised her with nearly a thousand dollars donated by viewers, along with a car donated by a dealership.

Off camera, I also got to tell her that I got her reinstated on the state Medicaid system and that a couple contacted us offering to pay for her to finish college.

When I retire, I suspect that's the story that will have meant the most to me.

You won the thread.

 

[SixToe]

Have done and seen some very cool things, had a few scoops and enjoyed my career.

Nothing in it compares to what @PCLoadLetter achieved. Well done!

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

LMU trouncing defending national champion Michigan is the greatest game I have ever seen at any level, and I covered lots of them.

Jeff Fryer couldn't miss. The whole country adopted Loyola Marymount that March.

 

[John]

Jeff Fryer couldn't miss. The whole country adopted Loyola Marymount that March.

I still think about Bo Kimble's lefty free throws. Chills.

 

[MisterCreosote]

Once I moved to the news side, the day Mike McGreevey stepped down as NJ governor with his “I am a gay American” speech was pretty damn surreal. We did some great journalism that day — I’ve never learned as much in a few hours as I did that day about Golan Cipel (McGreevey’s boy toy to whom he gave a high-ranking state post with no qualifications). But the best memory of all was watching it all unfold with our curmudgeonly gay metro editor, who couldn’t stop laughing and for some reason was on Cloud 9 about the whole thing.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

What a great story. Has she survived the heart issue? Where is she today?

Last I spoke with her was about six months ago and she was doing well then. Still working and going to school.

 

[MileHigh]

Gathers had collapsed during a game just before Christmas. He had all the medical tests and was put on meds. After that, LMU had a defib machine on their bench at every game and practice. I'm sure Gathers wasn't using his meds as ordered, especially on game-day, because they made him sluggish. In that situation, it's a hard call, defibbing somebody on center stage in front of an audience. One of the on-campus pastors was at the game suffered a mild heart attack because of the stress of the situation. But you have to do what is best for the stricken.
That was an unforgettable couple of weeks. LMU trouncing defending national champion Michigan is the greatest game I have ever seen at any level, and I covered lots of them.

I was there for that game at Long Beach Arena. I was part of the crew that ran stats at Cal State Fullerton and the Big West was hosting the NCAAs that year there so I helped run stats at the sub-regional. It was an amazing experience.

 

[WolvEagle]

As said above, PCLoadLetter, you win this thread.

For me, it was 12 years ago this month when I left the newspaper business. As I was leaving on my final day, my colleagues gave me an ovation - something I didn't expect. And, at my going-away party that evening, a LOT of people showed up - I was really surprised. I always thought of myself as a hard-working grinder, nothing flashy.

 

[ChrisLong]

I was there for that game at Long Beach Arena. I was part of the crew that ran stats at Cal State Fullerton and the Big West was hosting the NCAAs that year there so I helped run stats at the sub-regional. It was an amazing experience.

Some things I can't forget, it was so magical.
Freshman Christian Scott was put in the game and was in a daze, eyes big as saucers. He stood in the lane and didn't move. A Michigan player drove and bowled him over. Charging. Scott didn't even know what happened.
LMU's Jeff Fryer made 11 of the team's 21 3-pointers as it shot 53 percent from the floor. Afterward, Fryer said it was like Hank was sitting on top of the backboard guiding in all of their shots.
I remained skeptical until there were about 8 minutes left when I finally told our columnist next to me that LMU is going to win. I couldn't believe it.

There is just so much, so many memories.

 

[HanSenSE]

Reading through this thread, I have nothing that tops PCLoadLetter. But there were a few moments, mostly on news side in Merced.

I usually handled the front on Sunday night for Monday's paper. One afternoon, we get a call from our Congressman, who I was on a first-name basis with. A prominent local educator who was always his honorary campaign chair died. We talked a bit, then he dictated a statement to me before flying back to Washington that night. Made a few more calls, including one to the editor saying we needed help, since the Sunday reporter was on assignment, and I went into reporter mode. I knew a bit about her, since I had covered the district he worked in, but it came down to needing information from a profile that had been done about her in a special section. A special section that wasn't in the morgue. But one of the features writers, who I found out was a notorious pack rat when it came to clips, had a copy at home. Fifteen minutes later, we had what we needed.

One night, was doing the front when the news editor was on vacation. We had a lead story, but it was meh. Maybe 90 minutes before deadline, the chief copy editor calls and said he'd seen on television that Kenneth Parnell, the man who had kidnapped Steven Stayner from his Merced family decades earlier, had been arrested trying to buy another child, and was there anything on the wire? (This was after Staynr's brother had been convicted in the deaths of three women visiting Yosemite) Of course not, so after a few "holy **** he did what?" moments, someone scoured the net to confirm it, I hit the morgue to get some details, and since the editor was still hanging around, he helped me with the lead. A few minutes late on deadline, but worth it to get the news out.

And back in sports in Hanford, one night I had set up an interview with Olympic boxer Jose Ramirez at his hometown gym in Avenal, on the other side of Kings County. The other half of the department was covering a high school softball all-star game at Fresno State, so he filed from his home. Laid out most of the section except the agate page before me and our shooter left, because what could happen, right? I've told this story before: Matt Cain's perfect game was happening. Quickly transcribed all my notes from the interview and, as soon as the game in San Francisco was over, remade the whole page on the fly. Thank goodness a) we were a PM and didn't have a real deadline, except wneh news side came in at 6 am, and b) we were still doing our own pages, not a design center, so I didn't have to worry about explaining everything to a designer back in Omaha who may not know a thing about sports.