Media member sells Kyle Rudolph's gloves on eBay

Many years ago at our old office, we moved overnight from Point A to Point B in the building. We had 3 or 4 filing cabinets full of old records, etc. The SE and his assistant, neither one from the area, came in after we got the paper out to oversee the move ... and decided to pitch everything in those cabinets. We had a little bit of material elsewhere and we saved that, but these two blockheads just laughed it off when we bitched at them.

We also had a large cache of old football tabs that survived this purge, but another SE down the road dumped them, too, Fortunately, I think all of them are in our microfilm files, but that's cumbersome to locate, especially before I retired when the library was moved into a separate building. Now we can access the archived newspapers digitally, but there was no way or time to recreate all the files and folders that were lost.

 

I am old enough to have once used my paper's microfiche reader for research on a story.
Before the dark times, before the empire.

 

At one stop, we used to have a monthly silent auction where we’d dump all the stuff that came in (T-shirts, CDs, media guides, etc.). The money went to a local charity. It was a great idea for getting rid of the crap.

I still hit up the microfiche machines on occasion, and it’s made easier now by the ones at the big local library allowing you to “print” a clip as a PDF file.

Oh yeah, can’t believe this guy’s name still hasn’t come out.

 

Damn. I did that more than once. Makes me feel old.

 

My former place did that. Great idea. I got some good stuff at those auctions.

 

Prior to 2015, Norm MacLean would instantly have been the No. 1 suspect in this caper. But that's the year we lost the biggest schnorrer I've ever seen. A quick search turned up a couple of threads on MacLean, both highly entertaining.
A couple tales that weren't in either thread. At one Stanley Cup final in the late '90s MacLean would linger in the media lounge and sleep there. Finally, one writer, formerly a regular on this forum, put a post-it note on the couch: Norm MacLean Slept Here.
I had too many encounters with him over the years. The worst came in the media room at Nassau Coliseum during the 1993 Habs-Isles conference final. To accommodate the increased numbers, the media meal was served in a large conference room. Unfortunately, despite many empty tables elsewhere, MacLean came in and sat next to me and the late Steve Harris of the Boston Herald. He was snorting and hacking. He then proceeded to blow his nose several times on the table cloth. While we were eating. Did I mention he liked to eat with his mouth open?
Harris and I left before MacLean did. I asked Harris, "Did you see what I saw?"
Harris said, "Gawd, yes. I thought I was seeing things."
For those trying to identify the Rudolph ripoff suspect, I recommend checking to see if MacLean left any offspring.

 

There was one Norm MacLean thread on here that was legendary. I think it was lost in the 2005 site crash. (I've been here that long? Ugh.)

This one isn't too bad, either. This was when BYH was in his prime (his Bagwelldian best?).

The Legendary Norm MacLean

 

We had microfilm dating back decades. It was an incredible repository of history for anything as simple as checking a name to deeper research.

The digital fuckweasels said to toss it when the big transformation took place. Fortunately someone got the local library to save and preserve it.

 

I once spent the better part of eight months poring over old microfilm to compile our county's football record book. No one had ever done it or, it seems, thought to keep up with it over the years, so I had to start from the present day and work backward to the 1920s. I had to scroll through every game that there was a record for, both to account for single-game records and to make sure the career totals were as accurate as possible.
It was fun at first to learn about some of the history -- not just the local stuff, but to read the old AP and wire stories of major events -- but eventually became mind-numbing. I'd scroll through a couple of seasons, then find a guy who had a big game or two that might put him on the single-season or career lists, and have to backtrack to make sure I didn't miss a game where he had five rushes for 12 yards and a touchdown.
It started as a make-work project at Christmas, quickly blossomed into a curiosity, then became a chore by June and July when I was spending a couple of hours a day at the library to power through it and finish it in time for the football tab.

It was a great project, and I'm very proud of it. I've kept it updated since then, and it's been a source for a number of stories. But when people suggest I should do the same thing for basketball or baseball, where there are three times as many games scattered all over the week, I want to gut them, tie their intestines to the microfilm reel, and cackle maniacally as I hit the Fast-Reverse switch.

 

I think I have a box somewhere with all the football and basketball media guides I ever received. Kept for nostalgia, really. I think I finally recycled all the Olympic sports guides I had a few moves ago.

Still bummed I never got the 2004 Florida media guide with the crocodile on the cover. I believe the inventory was long gone by the time I covered a game at Ben Hill Griffin that year.

 

In 2005 or 2006 I remember going into the microfiche in my newspaper’s library. Don’t recall the story, though. Also spent a lot of time at the LexisNexis kiosk.

Now I wonder if that paper — 200,000 circulation or so at the time — even maintains its library. The research librarian certainly was laid off long ago.

 

I remember when their was a "media guide war" and I'm guessing some ADs figured rankings were deterimined by how big and glossy their guides were. Always thought the spiral bound ones seemed lame compared to the bound ones, but the beat writers told me spiral is better because they laid flat so you could refer to them while typing.
Didn't the NCAA step in at some point and regulate how big a media guide could be?