Your biggest moment in this profession...

Oh and CONGRATS, Snuk!

 

Ouch!

 

To answer the question, sadly, I think my best moment happened when I was still in community college.

I got a tip that the director of financial aid was extorting work study students. I took a staffer who was familiar with financial aid issues and terminology and the office itself and went down to investigate. The director implicated herself. Before I knew it, the story I wrote with the other person (I did the bulk of the writing) became the talk of the college.

A few weeks later, the Board of Trustees fired her.

 

Umm, F-T, I was implying that I put MY foot in MY mouth...

 

Congrats, Super.

I first thought you were gonna be making $180K, but I'd take a 40 percent raise, too.

 

I misinterpreted your comment. Sorry about that.

 

A couple things: Wrote a feature on a small-town former baseball player from the 1940s who spent most of his baseball prime in the military. Story was written for a 30k daily and picked up by the AP.

A month later, I wrote a story on an independent baseball player who played against the local team I was covering after said player was selected VERY high in the MLB draft. It led to a radio spot on the most listened to sports show in the state.

Might not be much to most of you but hey, I'm still a young pup.

 

Two of them:

First, before it was widely known who would play who in each bowl game, I broke who would play in our hometown bowl. I wasn't a beat writer, just the guy assigned to put together what I could about the bowls. Made a shitload of calls and had it that Sunday afternoon. Stripped across A1 with my name.

Second, now that I'm in the magazine business, mostly as a project editor, just had my longest story ever published. Nearly 4,000 words and it was given high praise as the type of story that our pub should be doing more of by the boss and thought of highly by everyone else so far.

 

Probably the day I saw the competition scoop me on their A1 front despite my efforts to the contrary. A couple days later it turned out their story was dead wrong and I ended up being right but I realized then I didn't have what it takes for the business, between the emotional highs and lows and working 70- and 80-hour weeks pretty much for nothing.

I'd wanted nothing more than to be a sports writer from the eighth grade on and it hit me like a ton of bricks when I came to mysad realization. I congratulate all of you for what you've accomplished and I hate to cast a pall on the thread but that, sadly, is my biggest moment in the profession.

 

As miniscule as it was, being asked to cover the D-I school's football practice. I'm a preps stringer, so it meant a lot about what they thought about me, at least at that point. Maybe I'm just taking it for more than it is, but it was cool, nonetheless.

 

Writing a feature that made the front page of espn.com as a junior in college. My career peaked that day and it's been all downhill since then. I figure it's only another year or two before I start stumbling around the streets of big cities, going up to people and asking them if they need me to write them any stories.