AJ-C traveling with Thrashers on team plane?

Is that why Max Mercy was traveling with the Whammer when they met Roy Hobbs on the train?

 

Seriously, bribing sports writers back in the day was the way to go.

That's how the Masters got to be the big hootenanny it became. They seduced the big shot writers traveling back from spring training.

 

I don't have a problem with it as long as they're paying, even if it is a reduced rate.

It's probably a lot easier on the writer, who won't have to deal with connections and whatnot. Considering what the AJC doesn't cover anymore, I'm impressed it's even acknowledging that there is a NHL team in the city.

 

Boxing and auto racing are the worst when it comes to this stuff. I know racing writers who have had the bulk of their travel covered by sponsors etc...

 

I'm not sure there is an NHL team in the city.....

 

If you went to school in SE Alabama, yeah we did pay.

If that's not your school, my apologies, but the "3 papers, just moved to FBS" sounds like a school I covered for a brief time. We traveled with the team, but each paper paid the school for the cost of airfare.

 

When I was covering an ECHL beat a few years back, it was fairly common practice for the beat writer to hop the team bus for occasional road trips (mostly during the playoffs. (The only time I ever went on the road during the regular season was to towns within driving distance, and there were quite a few in those days).

In fact, I also used to have the person making the team's travel arrangements book an extra room and have the hotel bill it directly to me. Occasionally, we'd run into a hotel that couldn't do that, so the team paid for it and billed the paper. And, of course, everything else — meals, extras, etc. — I paid for myself.

Of course, we're talking about a low-level minor league franchise in this case, NOT an NHL franchise in a major market. So, make of THAT what you will.

 

We've got a D-II women's basketball team that has a fighting chance at the Elite Eight this year and if they make it, the only way we make it is if they ask us onto their plane. They made it last year (it was in San Antonio - wrong end of the country) and we ended up relying on the school's SID.

We're small and remote and could easy bust $1,000 for a round-trip plane ticket from here alone. Sometimes in this day and age, you've just got to cry poverty.

 

My college football beat team has had to fly three times in the last 15 years. All three times, myself and a photographer have been on the plane at no expense period. It's a charter flight anyway provided by the NCAA, so it's not like the school is actually purchasing us seats on a commercial flight. The plane has X number of seats, and the team doesn't fill them, so newspaper, radio, etc, goes along.

It was real fun a couple of years ago to mess with one of the radio guys who had never been on a plane to say "Have you seen We Are Marshall?"

 

As far as those who are still printing, count in the Star Ledger. Marc Carig and Brian Costa do a very good job covering the Yankees and Mets, respectively, but for 85 percent of the time, the S-L uses Daily News copy for stories about either team. The new layout design is, IMO, bland and unimaginative. Plus, no more Mike Scott illustrations. But, I guess something like this is to be expected when you cut your newsroom staff by half.

 

I cover a pretty good FCS football team. Had to ride the bus with them some this year. It was that or nothing. We did pay them for travel, and I didn't eat with them. I do believe the paper worked out a room for me at the team rate. I wondered about this being the most ethical thing as I traveled with them, but again, I resigned myself to the fact that it was that or nothing and that was much better for my readers.
Just be a good journalist, and I think everything works out fine.

 

Oh bribes! So that's how people actually could make a living doing this crap.