Working with early deadlines

I've dealt with some less generous deadlines. One response is to really focus on previews and analysis and do less game coverage. You can still put together some solid roundups and file buzzer game stories (and maybe a little more) for print.

There's probably a mix of the suggestions on this page that'll help. You're going to get complaints, but you're going to get complaints no matter what you change, so don't let that grate on you. Look at your resources and your limitations and figure out what your goal is. Do you want to have a great paper and only OK website? An only OK paper and a great website? A half-decent paper and half-decent website? Once you evaluate that and answer the question, put all your energy toward that and don't flinch.

 

Editor friend of mine quit for that very reason...told me he got into the business to write, not sit behind a desk all night long.

I freelance for three area papers all owned by the same group...10:45, 11:00., and 11:15 deadlines. The staffers and myself all hate covering games for the early deadline paper, but like everyone has mentioned, we just keep it short and pray the game doesn't go into overtime.

 

Well, it happened tonight. All went to hell. Our crosstown rivals played their final regular season hoops games. It was an historic night for the home team. The girls finished the regular season a perfect 25-0, while a player on the boys scored his 1,000th career point. Both these things happened. The whole night was a big freaking deal. The school has one of the nicest gyms in the South, and it was a packed house. They gave us till 11 p.m. The girls started at 7, an hour later than normal, and the game nearly lasted two hours. The boys went to overtime. I got back to the office at 10:35, finished writing at 11:15. Five minutes later, press operator calls the sports editor asking why we were late. He kept the sports editor on the phone for 10 minutes that he could have spent working on the page. Then our system started screwing us. A photo we wanted to use mysteriously vanished, and so on and so forth. We sent the pages at 11:45, and I'm sure we'll hear about it Monday. Sorry customers won't get their papers till 6 a.m. instead of 5 a.m., but hey, at least they can read all about last night's games!

 

The biggest thing that's helped us with early deadlines is getting a laptop/tablet with built in WiFi for the dept, so stories can get filed from the games. Sounds like that could've saved you an hour with travel time. If higher ups want to stick to these things getting the guys on the ground the right tools is huge.

 

[QUOTE="ncdeen, post: 3869240, member: 12064"He kept the sports editor on the phone for 10 minutes that he could have spent working on the page.[/QUOTE]

I've never understood that mentality. Cuss me out for being late after I've gotten the page sent. Otherwise, you're just making me later.

I once had a publisher move our deadline up an hour and a half a week before baseball season. When baseball season started and there were no MLB boxscores, he tore into the sports editor.

 

Hope the sports editor told him what he could do with his early deadline.

 

I subscribe to the paper I work for, and my paper has arrived before I have gone to bed more than once. I don't stay up that late anymore, but it usually arrives around 3 a.m. And my area isn't THAT big ... I can't imagine it would take too long to make the deliveries efficiently. But I think the efficiency is the problem. And the carriers are a pain in the ass if they don't get papers when they expect them, so the whole deal revolves around keeping them from walking out.

During one of our bigger events, maybe a state college football game that started late, we had an hour later deadline. When we got back together on Monday, the SE told us we were blamed for the papers showing up at people's doors 3 hours late. Huh? That's some fuzzy math.

 

Last night the local D2 basketball teams were on the road. Normally for road games, we just run copy from the SID.

We got the women's game copy just fine. But the men's one never came. Our guess is the SID was at the big booster club event in town and decided not to write anything about the game. So we ran the women's game but nothing on the men. Which is too bad, because it was a come-from-behind win including an 18-0 run to close.

A heads up would've been nice...

 

"Journalists are easy to find. Good carriers are not."

[/a-holepublishers]

 

Is this going to turn into a "Dear dimwit in the publisher's office?"

 

I'm a little baffled. Why does everyone think 10:45 is a "ridiculously" early deadline? Our normal deadline is 11 p.m., with an option for midnight for special events, including Friday night football, but we have to request it a week in advance. Even with 11 as the deadline, it's not that hard to put together a decent 15-inch gamer with quotes. Assuming a 7 p.m. high school game goes 2:15 to 2:30 long, you take 10 minutes to get 2-3 quotes, compose your story in your head in the 20-30 minute drive back to the office, that gives you 45 minutes to an hour to write your story. Any competent writer ought to be able to put together a good gamer in that amount of time. Hell, I've been in situations where I had 20 minutes from the time I sat down to write until deadline and made it with time to spare. And you laugh about the good carriers quote, but it's a fact that you can write a Pulitzer Prize winning story, but if you can't get the paper to the readers in time, you might as well not bother.

 

We have an early first deadline (and an insanely early first deadline to get the Sunday paper out) because they want to get the paper out to surrounding counties that shouldn't even be subscribing to our paper with how screwed they get by the early deadline, especially when it comes to our baseball team.

Then this thread will catch up to the "dimwit on the phone" thread by the end of the day.