Dear dimwit on the phone

I had the discussion the other day about whether or not to do an all-area track team. I opposed it for two reasons:

1. Obviously, you should put state champions on the first team. The problem comes when you cover schools that are in different classifications and you could have a state champion from two schools (each in a different class) in the same event. It's tough to justify picking one state champ over the other, especially if the two had times or marks that were very close.

2. There are going to be years in which there just isn't a lot of quality athletes in a particular event. That's particularly true for areas with smaller populations. This past season, we had one sprinter win a state championship but there weren't really any others who stood out.

I'd much rather keep the track focus on state champions and surprising performers -- and even better when the surprising performer wins a state title in the process.

 

The last time I put down 35 hours of overtime in a two-week stretch, the response from my ME went a whole lot further than "Wow".

 

If someone on our copy desk worked a regular week in addition to covering someone else's shift in addition to having twice as many bylines as some of the reporters, our SE would be upset about what said copy desk person didn't do and actually be vocal about it.

 

Sadly, this has become more usual than unusual (the hours, not necessarily that high a byline count). Our other sports person left a few months ago, and The Powers That Be seem content to go this route rather than hire replacements. I can lean on the newsies to help some on the desk and with stories, but like I said in another post, they're not as knowledgeable and have enough stuff on their plate that it's just adding to the workload of an already disgruntled person.

It's not all bad, though, as long as I can find a way to throttle back this summer and keep some sanity.
Since actual raises aren't on the horizon anytime soon, and a job search outside of journalism has gone nowhere, this is the only way I'm squeezing more money out of this job. So I'm going to ride it as long as I can and try to build a nest egg for my wife and I. It's a sacrifice for a while, but I'm taking the long view. Hopefully I'll look at this in a few months or a year and see that it was worth it financially. So far, it has been.

 

Ah, parental units. And boosters.

A couple of years ago got an email from a mom noting about a half-dozen Podunk High kids has been left off all-league, claimed the coach forgot to nominate them, and could we consider them for all-county? We could make a case for a couple, but not all, and her kid was one who didn't make the cut. The player we picked at that position was clearly the better player. So, naturally, mom had to repeat the same rant when it went online.

That same year was also the first year Podunk Tech fielded a varsity team, and they had a few players who were worthy. And they did make the Section final. So naturally, right after mom's rant comes another one essentially saying "Nice job, Podunk Fiswrap. None of those Podunk Tech kids would have played for Podunk High, though." Well, yeah. Podunk Tech was cut out of Podunk West's territory, not Podunk High's. But the point is, it wasn't a how-would-they-have-done-at-Podunk team, it's the All-County team.

 

I'm glad that some of the suits in management seem to finally understand that when you reduce staff, you are either going to (1) cut production or (2) have significant overtime. In more than 20 years, I've only been in one newsroom that was truly overstaffed, where you had hourly employees with less than enough to keep them occupied.

More often, everyone is grinding at full capacity. Thus when one chair goes empty, how are you compensating for the lack if you don't have the balls to tell the public "we're cutting back our coverage, because we can't afford to keep Jack on the staff any longer".

 

I wish I worked for one of those suits.

 

A paper I used to work out had a "team" that just picked one person from each event. So we just grabbed the best high jumper or 400 runner in the area. Grab the state results, run down place and final time, weight them, easy. The state champs got their story the day after state. And then we picked an overall athlete of the year, but that was thankfully just one guy.

 

We do all-area teams in pretty much every sport each season. To me, sports like cross country, track and swimming are the easiest to pick. I keep lists of best times in those sports and that makes picking the teams easy. I also take into consideration the level of competition.

In swimming, we had a young lady win her state championship in the smallest classification, but she wasn't on our all-area team in that event because there were swimmers from other schools that simply swam faster in that event than she did during the season.

And our swimmer of the year was a young lady who finished second and third in her events in her state meet. I picked her over two other girls who each won two individual championships in a different state meet. Why? Times show the POY's meet was a tougher meet, her times in comparable events were faster than the state winners' times. and the one time they swam against each other in an invitational meet, the POY beat both of the other two head-to-head.

 

Same here, however this state has all-encompassing final meets in cross country, track and swimming. All the kids who qualified from previous rounds of the state tournament (or, in the case of swimming, achieved a qualifying time) compete against each other.

The performance list is very difficult to argue with, though parents (who don't have access to it) have tried. The biggest problem is when one kid has the top times in multiple events, which I've got this year in both boys and girls sprints. I also have a couple of future decathlete/heptathletes who are dominating multiple field events.

Luckily, keeping the performance list all year usually makes it easier to find the second-best kid in an event.

My biggest problem is what to do about the surprise county champion who just had a really great day.

 

It would seem like for the individual sports (track, swimming, golf, etc.) rather than pick an all-county team, just run the list of best performances and let it speak for itself.

 

Two weeks ago, a couple collegiate rowing events took place. We actually had reporters covering them. I think one of the stories even made the cover.

Last week, a TV station replays them, lady thinks it's live and complains that we didn't have any stories on it whatsoever.