Hiring people to take high school call-ins, build simple summaries

The fastest typist I ever saw was the late Mickey Humphrey, who covered preps at the Waco Tribune-Herald for years. He pretty much typed with two fingers, and he could take quotes over the phone as quick as the person could talk. It was amazing.

Equally amazing: I had a kid in my class a year or so ago who typed with one hand. He used his left hand to hit the shift key whenever he needed to capitalize something; otherwise, he typed everything with his right hand. He would be writing a story in class, and I would just stand and watch.

 

My first job in this biz was answering phones and writing capsules at the 100,000-circ daily when I was in technical school and later college. I remember the first conversation I had with the ASE.
ASE: We had a stringer turn in copy with numbers rather than names. If you do that, I will kill you.
Bamadog: Okay.

I made $35 every Friday and they brought me in on Tuesdays during basketball and baseball season as well. It was an excellent learning experience. What I learned there has carried over to the present day. He always edited my copy and explained, in his own unique style, why this was wrong and why this didn't work. Shoot, he even bought me an AP style book, my first.

I've had excellent results with high school kids working the phones and writing capsules on Fridays. They just have to be trained and be the right temperament for the job. If someone seems shiftless, they probably are. I had a great kid who I recruited in Florida and he took correction as well as anyone and I'm proud to say he turned into a great writer. The shame is he smartly decided to pass on our business.

Our ME's nephew works for us and he even won a state press association award for a sports photo. If they're properly trained and mature enough, I see no issues. Everyone has to start somewhere and by Jove, there has to be some future folks to take the reins when we all cash out.

The key words here are patience and selectiveness. Not everyone's cut out for the call-in, capsule gig.

 

I think you have to go with your instincts. If you sense that somebody does quite get it, you're most likely right. I had a stringer last year who had a nice resume and could write clean (i.e. grammatically correct) copy. But he didn't really have any sports experience, and I sort of knew he didn't quite get it. But I sent him to a game anyway -- after having a sit-down with him to show him what to do. His story was a royal mess. I went over the problems with him and gave him one more shot, but he didn't do much better the second week, so I stopped giving him work.

I've been looking for a stringer or two for this fall and I heard from someone with minimal sports experience ... I'm not even going to bother this time. It's not worth the hassle if you can find a few people who have some semblance what they're doing.

 

I've never covered a scrimmage or a jamboree and I've been doing this for 34-plus years. One of those quirks of fate I reckon.

 

I see what you mean now. I actually meant typing speed, not how long it takes to write a story, which involves much higher cognitive function that goes beyond simply the mechanics of typing.

I'll certainly allow that writing a 15-inch gamer in 15-minutes is faster than most folks can do it, although, I would ask, what is your starting point? The final whistle? Once you have your stats tallied? After interviews? I think a lot of people can write up a 15-inch gamer in 15 minutes assuming they have all their quotes, stats and notes ready to go.

As for typing speed, I'm sure you're fast and proficient with six fingers. I'm equally sure you would have been faster if you had started using 10 fingers.

 

Yeah, no doubt I'd be faster in terms of words per minute if I'd learned to type properly with all 10 fingers. But typing in a newspaper context is, as you said, a cognitive brain function where the hands and brain learn the pattern for certain words and can find those keys by instinct when needed.

That leads to some little quirks in typing. Probably the word that I typo more than any other is "the." My brain knows which keys to use, but sometime the sequence gets out of order and it comes out hte or teh. Also I'll sometimes go to type the word "coast" and it will come out as "coach," because coach is a word I use so often in sports that when I type the letters coa, my brain instinctively goes to that more familiar word.

And, yes, writing a 15-inch gamer in 15 minutes comes after the interviews and the stats are done. Unless I'm at a college game, I almost never start writing a story while the game is going on. At most prep games nowadays, I'm too busy doing updates, live chat, Twitter, etc.. plus I'm usually on the sidelines or in a cramped press box and there really isn't good place to set up a laptop during a game.

 

I would never chat or do Facebook/Twitter during a game. Too busy doing stats, looking up stuff, figuring out my lede and story angle, what questions I will ask, etc.

 

That's not an option these days, Mark. Newspapers require their writers to tweet during game coverage in many cases.