Rick Maese on Adam Schefter

Contains plenty of material meriting discussion on the Journalism board:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/adam-schefter-is-nfl-reporting-machine/2014/09/02/93e009f2-32cc-11e4-9f4d-24103cb8b742_story.html

 

Good read, thanks for posting

 

It was a good read. But I don't know if it's healthy, mentally or otherwise, to want to work that much. I don't want that job, anyhow.

 

I went to college to be a sports writer.

I joined the college newspaper. I had two co-workers there who worked six, seven days a week, almost never slept. Their only friends worked at the newspaper. The only parties they attended were at the newspaper office.

After about a year of sizing up the competition, I knew I was never going to make it. Was I a good writer. Yeah. Did I enjoy the job? Yeah. But I wanted so much more out of life than writing, traveling and writing some more.

So I chose to get out of the journalism business. I'm happily married with lots of friends, a few hobbies and a job that (usually) gets me home by 6 p.m. I genuinely enjoy my life. I'm not rich. But that's OK. I have everything I need.

So good for Adam Schefter and those two college buddies who have managed to stick with journalism all these years. Both are single. And all they do is write and travel. They seem happy.

But that's not for me.

 

It is sad. I think being in the autumn of life and wishing you had more fun would be about the most terrifying thing there is.

 

This a very nice secondary nut graf:

Schefter attended zero games last year and rarely talks to athletes face-to-face, yet he’s the reporter who keeps beat writers up late at night, the most prolific news-breaker in America’s most popular sport. As the NFL season prepares to kick off Thursday night, According to Adam Schefter has become a phrase every football fan knows all too well.

 

"Attended zero games."

But access!

 

I imagine Jay Glazer's MMA workout yesterday went something like this:

[jab-jab-jab]

Sources!

[jab-jab-jab]

Sources!

[jab-jab-jab]

Sources!

 

And he's never attended a game or practice so he could start building relationships. [/blue font]

 

I'm not sure when that changed. I've heard Peter King doesn't attend nearly as many games as he used to as well, probably because he does the Sunday Night stuff.

I knew Schefter pretty well when I was still a reporter and I never saw anybody work harder. Nobody was close, not in any sport.

He's consumed by it. He's was like this when I met him almost 20 years ago and he has never slowed down. That's what I don't understand. Nobody goes at the same pace at 47 that they did at 27, but he's the exception.

 

That's the thing. Schefter is married with a kid. How he manages to make that work is far beyond me.