Avoid the obvious

To my fellow sports journalists who have to cover a high school game (or any other event) this Friday:
As you know Friday is Halloween. Please avoid working in any type of Halloween lead into your story.
They are tempting, they can even be cutesy But they are overdone, and often way too forced. So unless you are extremely talented, don't let your readers cringe at your work.

Thanks,
Schmoe

 

'Tis the season!

 

throw out the record books in this rivalry

A tale of two halves

it was the best of times/worst of times

sweet revenge

we got no respect

weather cliches -- unless it was a REAL factor, nobody really cares

"The experts were wrong" -- Las Vegas doesn't pick HS games

 

Halloween reference is one of those "you get to do this once in a career, so make it count" things for me.

It does remind me that I need to caution our younger guys about that before Friday night.

 

The Bumfuck Giants tricked the Bumblefuck Royals on Friday night and it was a treat for the fans ....

 

I once told a room full of stringers that if I got any Friday 13th ledes that night, they were all fired.

 

This is one of those things that only we'd care about. Your average reader doesn't know or care how often you made a holiday reference in a lede unless you did it every day or they were keeping meticulous stats, in which case there's another problem.

I get not wanting to encourage lazy writing, but I don't think anyone who picks up the paper is going to be upset if they see a Halloween-themed lede on the story about the football game that took place on Halloween.

 

I kind of tend to agree with MM here, and that's a 180 degree change from how I felt about it when I was covering preps as a full-time gig.

Here's the thing: You may think it's trite. And you may think it appears in every story in the paper. But, meanwhile, the kids playing in the game think it's a big deal that the game's on Halloween. The fans think it's a big deal that the game's on Halloween. The school will think it's a big deal - "Monster Mash" and "Thriller" will be playing on stadium speakers everywhere tomorrow during warm-ups. And, finally, 90 percent of readers are going to read one game story from Friday night - theirs.

Who are we to ignore what, to the people involved and who care, feels like a big deal?

Same thing with Senior Night.

 

Were I still a sports writer, here's how I'd answer your question ...

"We are the ones who are hoping to use this clip (and others) to get a job at which we don't have to cover high schools."

 

It's like 'the good, the bad and the ugly' — you get to use it once

 

That's also the rule for the question lede.

 

Then that's up to you, isn't it?