Alan Robinson

Depending on what graf it was in, big deal.

 

FAIL.

Making a point about corrections doesn't carry a lot of weight when you can't spell the first name of your favorite team's starting running back.

 

Steeler fan-on-Steeler fan violence!

 

What does the winner receive?

 

Damn. I didn't even get the name right. I guess I am not that much of a fanboy afterall.

 

A Torry Bradshaw autographed jersey.

 

Spelled C A T?

 

And here I thought you were quoting a misspelling of Mendenhall's first name from the story to make your point.

 

Yes, this happens all the time, at least at AP. I wrote hundreds of stories under other people's bylines for breaking news and sports, as they dictated in from the field. Some would dictate a lede, others would just dump their notebooks. The byline at AP goes to the person on the scene of the event, but it's usually written elsewhere, and usually by more than one person.

I can't tell you how many times I'd work with a staffer in the field, and then they'd come back to the bureau hours later to read what "they" wrote for the wire. But it was rarely an adversarial thing, and staffers always had influence on a story if they didn't like the lede or the flow.

Usually AP reporters get their best chance to "write" with enterprise, second-day stories or an AMer of a game story. But there's no time and way too many editors involved for a reporter to have the luxury of writing his or her own breaking news story at AP.

 

When you read an international story written by someone with a foreign name, the story is written by an editor at a bureau. The reporter calls in the details and the quotes, and the editor writes the entire story.

 

That rarely happens on sports. When it's a baseball night and eight games are coming in at the same time, they don't have time (or desire) to screw around and overhandle the leads. They may make some routine editing changes, but 99% of the time, the story on the wire is essentially what the staffer has filed from the ballpark.

 

That's what I would think too, Smasher. Calling in or writing up notes just to email them to a deskman and have him/her do the work may have been the routine once upon a time ... like in the movies when they duck into a phone booth and say "Give me rewrite!" And I can see it in a complex story, like, say, Egypt. But if you're gonna pay a reporter to be there, let him/her do the work. Otherwise, just write it off the Gamecast or Automated Scorebook and get quotes from the PR follks.