Election Night Pizza

Some of the responses on here are laughable, as if news side sits around and twiddles its thumbs on an average night, then leaves as soon as their last page is sent. I've worked hundreds of football Fridays and worked my share of election nights. I'll take footall Fridays any day of the week.

There are hard-working people and lazy, manipulative people on both sides. Sacrifices of time and effort to get news in the paper and get it done correctly isn't the sole domain of one or the other.

 

Not quite fantasyland here. Except now that you mention it, maybe that dust is really pixie dust. I'll check into that.

 

I'll take a plain pie, or if I need to pick toppings, broccoli, spinach, or veggies. Or even better yet, instead of a pizza pie, I'll take a tomato pie: http://www.sliceny.com/archives/2005/01/delorenzos_toma.php


Our news and sports departments get along fine, so there's no problems on election night... even when we had one guy from sports be on his fourth slice of the free pie before some people from news had their first.

 

Occasionally, I'll stop in the office after a game to turn in expenses or sort through my mail and if it's past 11 p.m., there are usually 2-3 people still working on newsside...

The only other people in the building are the janitorial staff and, oh yeah, the entire fucking sports staff...

Isn't the motto, "Sports, where every night is election night..."

 

They don't twiddle their thumbs here. One of our feature writers is making the daily long-distance call to her daughter to complain about her job, life and finances. At least three days a week she's in tears.
Our Ed. reporter, who is damn good, is conversing with one of our county beat writers on the lower points of the X-Men character Storm from the movie as opposed to the comicbook version.
Two of our copy desk people are surfing the internet - one of which is constantly logged onto some World of Warquest message board.
There goes feature writer into tears.
Earlier, our EE was trying to figure out how many pizzas to order for the troops tonight. He'll be here 'till about 2, then come in about 8 a.m. and tell everyone within earshot how hard it was for him to get up this morning.
And of course, he'll take time to make a public decree and thank all the news reporter for their hard and outstanding work last night.

I accept this.
It gets under my skin that sports is overworked and (vastly) underappreciated, but I accept it.
We were handed a 24-page playoff tab to fill last night. Our standard weekly prep tab is 12 pages. It got done in addition to the regular shit that we do - plus the special wraps for four local playoff teams.
I understand reporters going above and beyond the call of duty election night, I do.
But when their above-and-beyond is business-as-usual in sports, it's hard to applaud them for doing something once a year that we do weekly.
I'd like to see us get a little (positive) recognition once in a while.
Just once, I'd like to see the EE here buy pizza for the sports staff one Friday night - followed by a round of public kudos Monday morning.
Even better would be a lot of Asian hookers after a Friday night deadline.
Happy Endings all the way around!

As for pizza: I'll take one with the works!

 

Stop whining. Until you've worked both sides for a significant period of time, don't assume you know what it's like to work in news. Is sports normally overworked and underappreciated? Yes. But so are the people who work in news. Just as much and just as often.

 

I've worked both sides of the fence. I think the Degree of Difficulty scale runs roughly like this.

Toughest: Any shift on the police beat.
Next toughest: (tie) Election night/any sports Friday night.

 

I definitely agree that the cops beat is the toughest at a paper...

 

Some great responses here, funny and truthful, perhaps both at the same time. Here's the problem, and I'm sure it's not unique: We've got a bunch of good people, working their asses off on election night and all the run-up to it. I respect them, I don't envy them.
However, tomorrow morning, after having gotten an hour or more of deadline relief, the fawning praise in emails from the higher-ups will make me ill. Not because the praise isn't merited, but because that type of praise never makes it to the "toy" department, no matter how much of a freakin' miracle we pull off WITHOUT an hour -- or even two -- of deadline relief. We pull this off all the time, as I'm sure many or your shops do. Most of the time, it's with no relief -- and we're more apt to catch flak for being 10 minutes late than to get praise for doing the job.
That's the pisser. So I'm going to eat as much damn pizza as I please -- make it a pepperoni/italian sausage mix. Rant over.

 

I hate to say it, but election night pizza is management's way of sticking it to sports ... again.

EDIT: Oh, yeah. Sausage, mushroom, onion and green pepper.

 

Dumbest statement of the thread so far.

And my favorite part of the evening was setting aside a slice or two for the guy who was stuck at some far-away bureau, waiting for the 75-year-old clerks to grind out the totals.