Sad story - respected sports writer dies

Saw this story yesterday about a sports writer dying after 38 years at the same paper, and it really struck me as heartbreaking.

Not the death itself, though that obviously was sad. But parts of the story hit me with a "was it worth it?" question. Guy had no spouse, no kids, clearly was married to the job.

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"He was supposed to work a standard 40-hour week but supervisors often struggled to keep him from doubling that number."

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Batterson seemingly never stopped working or at least thinking about work.
“We would be at some family event and he would be on the phone, getting leads on whichever Iowa football player had just been arrested,’’ said Jeff Batterson, Steve’s younger brother. “He just never stopped working.’’

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Looked on his Twitter account, and one of his last tweets was about being appreciative of the level of care he was getting in the hospital, and how he's ready to start getting better, and mentioned offhand how he has a week of furlough coming up.

I think we all have come to terms with the "this job will never love us back" approach, and that is far from exclusive to newspapers, but this story really hit that home, and what he sacrificed for his non-stop working, both monetarily (I'm betting him working double a 40-hour week was rarely compensated) and personally.

Also had me reflecting on my own newspaper days, and what I neglected and sacrificed as I gave everything I had to a paper and a profession that rarely gave the same in return.

Community mourns death of Quad-City Times sports reporter Steve Batterson

 

Hell, not only does the job not love you back, the people in management AT the job many times could give a damn as well.

 

As worthy as the job is - I know I had to tie my self-worth up into the job - and if/when the job goes, so does your identity. Took me a bit to get over that - that "you aren't what you do" for a living. About the only people that applies to is a Senator or Congressperson.

 

What haunts me is the idea of being on your deathbed, and thinking about the regrets you have in life and what you would have done differently if you could do it all over again.

I can't imagine a scenario where I'd be having warm thoughts about working 80 hours a week, typing up agate on a Sunday morning and being on duty constantly, enduring furloughs, pay freezes and layoffs in a dying industry, rather than spending that time with family and friends, personal relationships and non-work passions.

Though we all have the things that we regret and would do differently if we had the chance, so it isn't fair to me to judge others and their journeys and choices, I guess.

 

Nobody here would judge anybody else negatively about being devoted to the job. Most of us lived it, for at least a good part of our lives. It was just the nature of the work.

The thing is, it doesn't even take 38 years of living it -- it only takes about 10 or 15, if it's the right 10 or 15 years -- to miss out on meeting someone who could be the love of your life, or spending enough time with them for them to become that possibility, and to miss out on having a family, because your focus was on work, and in fact, may have been about all you cared about or gave the time of day, or night.

And, the need to live by everyone else's schedule in chasing things down, meeting deadlines, traveling, and then writing/compiling the actual work in between it all, ended up being the thing that has made most of us who left newspaper/media jobs not miss them at all once we did so.

I would never wish how I left the business on anyone, but I am glad, now, to have experienced something else since then. It has added nuance and more meaning to life, and given me some perspective I would never have had had I continued in journalism.

 

There is also something to be said for believing working in news is "vital" - I think everyone, no matter what they do, likes to think that they serve a purpose in their work and has meaning - rather than just clocking in for a check.

 

Yep, 100%. Might sound egotistical, but you get used to the dopamine from retweets and mentions and readers e-mailing you about how you're a hack or that was a great story. Even people telling you, "Wow, you have the coolest job in the world!" It absolutely becomes who you are. In hindsight, I'm glad that bubble burst. Makes you realize a lot of things.

 

I only worked as a stringer for a couple years. But I ran into some sportswriters who's entire life was sports. If they were not working for the paper they were watching sports or going to games. There social interaction was with the athletes they covered and the writers they interacted with. They were frequently single.

I thought is was a poor way to live a life but who am I to judge?

 

Maybe this sports writer found immense joy and fulfillment in the work that he did. Maybe he didn't want a spouse or children. Maybe that's why he lived as he did. Maybe it was worth it to him.

If not, then, yes, it's sad.

 

It's been such a revelation in my second career that my office, top to bottom, has the attitude of, "We can get that done tomorrow. Family comes first."

It's been such a revelation that it took me 2-3 years to totally trust it.

 

You left too soon - now more and more newspapers are saying "We can get that done tomorrow (since we don't publish for another couple of days!)

 

So much the same, Shotty.

It's been almost 5 years now for me, and just recently, we had some big project that was percolating throughout the week, and it went silent over the weekend. I mentioned to my boss on Monday that I guess it went on the back burner because I hadn't heard anything, and he said, "No, I was handling the updates on it. You didn't need to be burdened with that on Father's Day weekend. I can loop you back in on it now."

When I tell my co-workers about some of the shit that went on in my newspaper days, they are shocked.