For $40.....

This brings me back to talking to my girlfriend, a couple years younger than me, when she'd call from the pay phone at school on her lunch break my freshman year of junior college. I remember an exchange that went like this:

(muffled voice says hello to my girlfriend)
Girlfriend: "Hi coach."
(muffled voice)
Girlfriend: "I'm talking to BYH."
(muffled voice)
Girlfriend: "Coach XXX says hi."

He was my track coach and I was already covering him and his football team.

 

Inadequate for what?

 

It has been my experience that many high school press boxes are de facto VIP suites.

 

Ah the Trash 80. Brings back memories.

 

Lean the TRS-80 against the phone, punch in the credit card phone number, then the modem number back at the office, listen for the squeal, jam the handset into the couplers, then gently move the TRS-80 so you can hit the right keys and trigger the filing, all the while hoping a semi doesn't roar by or the couplers don't uncouple. Or in one case, that storm on the horizon doesn't get to you first. Then disconnect it all and call the office to see if they got it and if there's garble.

 

In the late 90's / early Aughts the paper I worked for had a remote something similar to couplers except you could dial in via a POTS line. It seemed to be every bit as persnickety. Once I lost a whole story and had to retype it from the host coach's house.

My next paper was more advanced and you could file from any place you had dial-up. We did have a long-distance credit card, but most places were local calls. It became more challenging when press boxes switched to digital systems and you had to find a fax line.

 

Seating for media.

 

There were so many permutations. On a TRS-80 you could set up the calling chain (CC number if long-distance, computer line number, commas [I think] for delay to allow the connection to work, plus an 8 or 9 at the front if necessary) to do it automatically if you were direct-connected on a phone. I had a bunch of options programmed in and it worked like a charm. But then the digital era came in and it was chaos again. Or connecting internationally. I found out our company CC number didn't work outside the U.S. when needing to file three stories on deadline from Canada. A stringer took dictation for close to an hour. E-mail changed everything for the better.

 

Different perspective here. I lettered in band, which is silly no matter how you look at it. Whatever. Percussion got to sit down front and I had a great view without the byline. The boys covered sports for the high school fishwrap and in Nashville we were lucky to have a handful of seasoned pros who had an almost preternatural enthusiasm for varsity sports. We were spoiled. They worked for the papers and the affiliates (all three of them!) at the time.

By the time I got back here, it was whoever was learning from John Gannon and Rudy Kalis and then it came down to Rudy until he retired. Good coverage of varsity level sports is a thing of beauty in the right hands. I know for many it meant long hours for horrible pay just to get clips and a foot in the door. There are a lot of 30.00 on down to exposure and a seat in the press box kids covering events at all levels. It's a damned shame because the quality of coverage my classmates enjoyed may have been a function of people getting decent paychecks showing up at Antioch and White House and Dickson to let their viewers/readers see why we were cheering - whether it was for good ball or civic pride or a mix of both.

This geezer moment was provided by The Banner, The Tennessean, WTVF, WKRN, WSMV, and posters like you. Thank you.

 

some dont even have coaches booths. You get there an hour before to carve out a spot ahead of the radio guy and the cable tv guy and just get elbowed out by the visiting team’s Steve Sarkisian wanna be in his headset

 

You’ll walk the sidelines like the rest of us and send your story from the tailgate of your pickup truck … like the rest of us.

 

I was definitely supposed to get more than $40 for my first stringing job nearly 30 years ago. Think $75. Worked at a daily while going to JUCO and covered a playoff football game. The paper that covered the other team called the office one night while I was in and asked if someone could string the game for them. Since I was already covering it I said sure.

Friday came, I covered the game, came back to the office, wrote the story for my paper and faxed it to the other paper. Few minutes later their sports editor called and asked where were the quotes from their team's coach? From their team's players? From the people they cared about? Well I didn't talk to them, I explained. The other team, the school in our area, won in a blowout, and I wrote the story and sent it as agreed. He was now quite upset, cursed, hung up.

I explained to my boss what an asshole this other editor was on the phone.

At the time I didn't have Google to look up what a stringer did. I didn't have the wise elders of SJ to explain it to me. I didn't realize I was expected to write a story from the perspective of the school the paper cared about. Whoops.

I actually did get a copy of their paper and they used a lot of my info. Alas, I didn't get my check. Didn't blame them.