For $40.....

Our overlords were not known for their spending. I’m guessing the came with different memory sizes. Ours were probably like 8k.

 

I started at weekly, but on Fridays in the fall I'd do a gamer for our daily mothership. I'd ship a copy of that back to my office and on Monday morning would rewrite the upper part of it, make it more featury/analytical, pointing at the next game.

At my last stop, given how far some of our teams had to travel in the playoffs, was always happy to swap spit with another paper in another area, especially if one of their teams was playing one of ours.

 

I triple-dipped a high school game once. Fort Worth (Texas) Everman was playing at Waco Midway, and I covered it for the Waco Tribune-Herald, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Dallas Times Herald (RIP).

 

You had to buy the extra memory. I think it came with 8K but you could add another 32K or something. Plenty of room for a bunch of stories.

 

I’m impressed. Have covered XC for three papers, shooting pix for one as well, but 12? Yikes.

 

I regularly contacted outlets that covered road teams when I covered Liberty because it was an easy way to make extra money. Was not always easy for 7 p.m. football games, but look, the Wilmington paper only needs like 12 inches and a quote for a Delaware State football story anyway, and I always tried to nab the opposing coach on the field as it was. Ended up being a decent side hustle.

 

Covering for multiple outlets in different markets is fine. Or covering for a daily and a weekly in the same family, also fine. But I'll see guys with bylines from the same game in two papers that both come out on my street but are in no way related. I know the talent pool is shallow, but once upon a time that would never have flown. Do people really care that little now?

 

When the newspaper industry started crashing hard 15 years ago, the suits (yo, Fredrick!) were amazing swift at abandoning so many rules that, for decades, they had insisted were the cornerstones of journalism, carved in granite.

 

I know someone who used to make thousands of dollars every August stringing the Little League East Regionals for every paper that had a team in the tournament. For all I know he still is, b/c I'm pretty sure our local team didn't get bylined coverage until it got to Williamsport this year (I could be wrong, but in my jaded wizened age, I'm so sick of Little League being even more cynically manipulative than the pros that I try not to pay any attention at all). Also know at least two people who covered a minor league team and made a small killing on the side by also covering the visitors for their papers. I assume that gig is gone now b/c I find it hard to believe papers do road coverage of their minor league teams. Or maybe even home coverage.

 

"Just give everything a fast edit, and we'll fix anything else on the proofs."

"Don't worry about proofing entire pages. Just check the big type and the display stuff."

"No need to backread anymore. Slot editors, check heds and ledes, then push the pages through."

"No time to read that story. Just send it through now, and we'll get some eyes on it for the final."

"Well, we're running out of time. Just blow the pictures up real big."

"Remember, folks, work smarter, not harder!"