Is what we do demeaning?

boots - maybe this board is a little like real iife ... you have to prove yourself before others decide to prove themselves.

 

Tom, who on this board does anyone have to "prove themselves" to? If you mean be accepted in the message board clique, you might have a point.
But what does anyone, including you and I, prove here? That we have access to a computer? That we can rant about what we want?

 

boots - i will give you the last reply to this thought because i think we are beginning to stray quite a bit from thread's original meaning, but, don't we all have to prove ourselves even a little bit in every facet of our lives? i mean the girl who works the counter of the store i go to every day on the way into work respects me a shitload more now than she did the first day i walked through the door. hence, i proved myself to the "minimum-wage keeper" of my unsweetened ice tea, and now she asks my opinions and if i'm having a nice day or not. am i cliquish with her when i walk in the door of that particular store? maybe, if that's how you want to label the interaction. but, the bottom line is, we all have to establish our roles before anyone accepts us for who we are or aren't. that's not "newspaper sportsguy stuff," that's just life.

i think it's unfair to label this board as anything more or less even if i am defending PW.

 

I have to prove myself to only one person, God. In life, you're going to have people who like and dislike you. A perfect analogy is Jesus and the 12 disciples.
All PW wanted was a little direction. He got thrown to the wolves. That wasn't right.

 

The adversarial role noted by waynew is vital to what we do. If you schmooze too much with the people you cover, you will compromise your ability to do the hard stories. And no matter how much you schmooze them, the truth is, they would rather you not be around at all. Unless you have no watchdog in you anymore, whatsoever.

Now, more than ever in this business, you start to feel that the folks back at the shop don't have your back, either (not in any tangible way, Tom Petty). No raises or lousy ones, no advancement, downsizing that spills more work onto you, budget cuts that eliminate some of the better assignments, editors who relay -- without filters, to save their own asses -- all sorts of criticism and crap from management and readers. You're on the road while your kids are growing up, getting turned down for a post-practice interview by a screwhead with a $5 million contract and a $5 brain/heart/spine, and then you get shredded in the "comments" section at the end of that blog you had to crank out in your 10th or 11th hour of work that day (you know, one of the unpaid ones).

You look back over the last year and can only come up with five or six stories that stood out for you, because of the grind. Then you see jobs for which you'd give a kidney filled (or worse, vacated) by folks who are no better than you but satisfy a demographic category. You think about where the industry as a whole is headed and the horse race between hanging on till a retirement you might not be able to properly fund vs. getting booted out by bosses panicking to cut costs.

No wonder some of us start thinking about working for a living and somehow writing for a hobby.

 

I was going to abstain from this thread. I grow tired of whining.
But, this is a wonderful point. One worth noting and one I've thought of many times during those 12-14 hour days.
I've discovered, in management of a section, there can be -- at times -- very little journalism in newspapering. But around the corner, there is that special story. That piece no one else will have. The one that gets you excited. Makes you excited to go to work.
Frustration is a state mind. Devotion is a lifestyle.

 

PW, without outing yourself, what do you cover? Preps? Colleges? Pros? GA? What do you thing journalism is?

The best advice I can give is to try to get to know your subjects on a personal level. Think about what they're going through on the field/court/ice and then try to ask probing questions. I learned that if you do that, you'll get really good stuff and the questioner/questionee wall comes down and it's just two people talking.

 

boots - i said i'd give you the last word ... there it is.

 

College football.

And it's not set up to get to know anybody. It's set up to prevent that.

 

Demeaning might not be the word I would use, but I can empathize with the frustration of not being able to connect with some (or even most) of the players on your beat, especially if it is a major college beat.

Sometimes, it's not as simple as, "just try harder."

The college I cover, you see each player for, maybe, 10 minutes a week, and it's always in the context of a 10-person media gang-bang. There are no one-on-ones. None. To the players, you are just a face in the crowd, no matter how many times you introduce yourself.

There are players I've covered for three years who wouldn't know my name. If they saw me in public, they'd recognize the face. But they wouldn't know the name.

The SIDs want it that way. And they go to great lengths to make it that way.

I don't think that's demeaning. Just wildly frustrating.

 

YES!!!!! EXACTLY!

 

Which is why it might be time for you to leave. Don't become an old frustrated person talking about what you should've done.