i scratch your back, you say get lost

i wouldn't have a problem at all sending something to an sid and have done so on many ocassions. and when i've needed something from them i've gotten what i needed no problems at all. heck, if i happen to get a great shot of the team i'm not covering i've forwarded it to the other paper with a note to use it if they like. you can use all the good karma you can get. did the same thing with a pic from the state track meet and it wound up on the cover of the next year's state track program. but like one person above said, some in the business have integrity and some couldn't find the word in the dictionary.

 

Not the same thing. It's your J-O-B to give us photos whenever we want them. It's not our job to give you anything, and in fact if we do give you one, it could make us appear to be in cahoots with the athletics department, and that's not something we want.

 

By the way, it's too late to threadjack this as far afield as it has gone anyway, but don't be surprised in the least if it becomes SOP for ALL reporters at some places to start carrying digital cameras in the field for on-the-spot coverage, especially at non-union shops. All part of the synergy or repurposing or whatever you want to call it.

Yes, photos will bitch, but they'll still be going to the important assignments. And yes, it will happen.

 

I don't know the meaning of "quic pro quo" either. But "quid pro quo" ...

 

Speaking of the smaller paper/big paper exchange, I"ve seen it work the other way, too. I'm at a fairly large paper east of the Mississippi and I"ve bent over backwards to take time out within an hour of deadline to send fresh, copyedited stories from our beat writers of major beats for the little guy to use, but I turn around and ask them to get a couple of quotes from a teleconference at a school not far down the road from them and they tell me they don't have the manpower. This crap works both ways.

 

Let's see if I get this straight. If I give you a free hotdog, you are worried that I might be trying to sway your coverage. . . make it look better than it actually should be. . . but if I give you head and shoulder or action photos. . . this isn't a problem because it isn't the newspapers J-O-B to take its own photos?

That seems to be talking out of both sides of your mouth.

By giving you the photos, am I not swaying your coverage because you wouldn't have deemed it necessary to take the photo to go with the feature story? By using the photo, aren't you accepting the same kind of assistance that papers generally shy away from accepting -- especially since I paid to get the photos taken.

For the record, it isn't my J-O-B to give newspapers photos. I give them photos only when they aren't willing to take the photo themself. My J-O-B is to assist media outlets in covering my athletic program. I'd prefer to have them take their own headshots and action shots, but if they are too lazy to get this done, then I will step in to make sure that my school isn't short-changed in the paper.

But that isn't swaying your coverage.

 

Maybe I should spend all of my time on this site calling attention to typos made by other posters. . . boy, wouldn't that make me a favorite person among this group. They usually tend to chastize and ridicule people who do this.

But don't worry, they'll probably let your posts slide.

 

True story:

Back when I was the sportswriter at a 15K daily, our publisher and editor thought we were at war with the paper across the river (about a 75K daily). We used to talk about beating them on everything, all that good stuff. We scooped them a good bit on our coverage area (they never really put forth that great of an effort).

So one day I'm covering an LPGA tournament during the fall. It's Friday, it starts to rain, tournament gets delayed. Meanwhile, I've got to cover a football game 20 minutes away. So they finally call the tournament for the day, I file my story and I get to the football game at halftime. The writer from the bigger daily is there, and sees me when I walk in. I'm asking everybody in the press box to point out the "stat" guy from the team, so I can get first-half stats and piece together some form of a story by deadline. Nobody knows where the guy is. Writer from competing daily says, "Hey SCEditor. You can use my stats." I get all the information I need and after the game he offers to let me file at his paper's office, which was considerably shorter a drive than our home office. But I already had a place to file nearby, so I was good to go. But I'll never forget that act of kindness. It's one thing if you're a competing daily, but it's another to act like the opposing paper is the enemy and you should do everything in your power to sabotage (or even not help a fellow journalist in his time of need). When I came back, I told my editor about it and he was in disbelief. He couldn't believe the "enemy" would help me.

Flash forward a few months later in basketball season. Another writer is in his first week working our paper's beat and he covers a big high school basketball game. Can he file at our paper? "Sure, no problem," says one of my co-workers. He comes in, writes his story and uses our fax line to send in his gamer. No big deal. At the time, we were printing in the morning, but sports worked at night. The only problem? The writer forgot to plug in our fax machine, and our paper didn't get any of the obits faxed in that morning. Our editor/publisher went through the roof. I happened to be in the office, and said, "Oh, Joe Blow must have left the fax machine unplugged." ... "Joe Blow from the Podunk Press was here?" "Yeah, he filed his story from here." You would have thought our entire sports department had committed an act of treason.

I've always helped other papers and journalists. There's one on here who can attest that when doing preseason football stuff, I sent him some information on local teams, and in return he sent me some information on a team whose coach has yet to comprehend how to operate a telephone. Sure, newspapers are in competition. Sure, we're trying to sell more papers than the other guy. But the world isn't going to end if you help somebody out, is it?

 

Too lazy? That's quite an assumption. I'm certain there are other circumstances that would prevent a paper from obtaining its own photo, such as time or distance.

 

You are being paid to assist media outlets -- your words. We ask you for a photo, but if it isn't up to our standards (looks staged, for instance), we don't run it. We read your press releases, but we don't necessarily believe them or run them as-is; we rewrite them or do our own reporting. You don't sway our coverage, we evaluate what you provide and make a decision on whether we use it or how.

We don't take mug shots because that is not the best use of our professional photogs, any more than staffing your school's rugby match is the best use of our professional reporters. Instead we will run your mugs and rewrite your rugby press release in order to remove all cliches and propaganda and to condense it into the one paragraph it deserves.

I can't speak for the papers that cover your program, but anywhere I've been there is no "quid pro quo" at all. Your job is to assist us, our job is not to assist you, in fact often our job is to print what the school doesn't want known.

 

Just_A,

Most papers will allow schools to use shots in their media guides and such. Sounds like you got a lemon.

But -- unlike a few years ago -- it's not difficult for someone who owes you a favor maybe to find a photo and put it in an email and send it anywhere you want these days.

If you know what I mean.

 

Just_an_SID is cool with me, and obviously, Frank is, but it's completely different.

SID's job is to provide photos -- yes, that's part of the deal -- and information to newspapers.

It's NOT the other way around. Never has been, not in my 30 years in the biz.