Is what we do demeaning?

We might be covering the same college. You just learn to live with it after a while.

 

There are times, covering a top-five college team, when I wonder if I'm the butt of some hidden-camera practical-joke show.

-- Drive an hour round-trip for a practice. We're supposed to be allowed in for our daily 15 minutes at 4 p.m. We're finally let in at 4:45 -- for 7 minutes.
-- Ask a fourth time if I can have 5 minutes with assistant coach after practice. "I'll check, but I don't think it'll be a problem." After practice, "I looked for him; I don't know where he is."
-- Led from one end of the football complex, where we were told to enter for media day, to the far corner of the indoor facility (walk of about 350 yards, for a courtesy "meal" of hot dogs and sausages that had flies landing on them. There is a door right near the food. We could have entered there. After meal, led outside (in 95-degree weather) back to the other end of the complex. Coaching staff found out we'd been in the forbidden areas earlier, so we had to walk outside (I guess so we wouldn't see state secrets) this time.
-- No such thing as a one-on-one interview with a player. Usually, 10 minutes max, with five-10 others encircling him.
-- Student sports information staffer taping every interview (supposedly for "learning purposes," but clearly to check the accuracy of what we write, and to keep tabs on what we're asking).
-- Having to stand right next to five or six portable toilets while we wait to go inside for our 15 minutes when practice is indoors. Coach comes out one day and does his business while we stand three feet away. Manager another time.
-- Players available Monday and Tuesday of game week. Coach available Sunday (to a select few), Monday (presser) and Wednesday.
-- Arriving at practice fields at 9 a.m. (media allowed in at 9:15) the day of a scrimmage. A staffer says, "Oh, they decided to do it in the stadium." By the time you drive there, park and walk to the right gate, you find out the seven minutes of pre-scrimmage practice open to the media is already over.
-- Ninety percent of the quotes you get are on the radio or Internet (or both) before you get back to the office. So much for fresh material.

Sometimes you think they're just fucking with you. Other times you think they're trying to see how much they can fuck with you.

Of course, they get pissed when you do the arrest stories and other "negative" stories, but they don't understand that they've made those easier to write than the features and get-to-know-so-and-so stories you'd like to write.

I feel everyone's pain and frustration. I'm not going to quibble with someone using the term demeaning. Sometimes you do feel like they're just laughing behind your back, saying "Can you believe they let us do this to them?"

That said, I work hard to work around all the roadblocks. I find other ways to get the story, or a different story. It's all you can do. When it's no longer worth it, I'll become a Wal-Mart greeter.

 

I'm not going to bother scrolling through all four pages here. The towel snapping on the first page was enough. But spnited is right, dude. If you don't like it, if you think it's demeaning, find something else to do, whether it's in or out of the industry.

 

Pulitzer: After further following the board, it sounds as though you want a different role vs. a different career. beat reporting is a whole different beast than being, for instance, general assignment, especially at a paper big enough to let you specialize in in-depth personality profiles. ... Maybe you're wanting to move a different direction, carve out a niche that fits you ... it's possible, no? But it always takes a long damn time to get there.

TomPetty's followup comments reinforce my point about the board -- and do shed light on the community of colleagues in the field ... i say "shed light," not define.

 

damn, Johnny Dangerously, those experiences are the definition of demeaning. things have obviously gotten more combative since I was covering stuff, definitely on your beat.

 

Everyone's had a moment (or 20) like this.
If you haven't, you will.

Just about everyone on these boards is devoted to the craft, to writing good stories, to finding that one small detail that makes your work stand out.

Problem is, there are an increasingly number of factors that make that process incredibly difficult and frustrating. Deadlines, declining readership, arrogant athletes, shorter stories, blogs, bitchy parents, low pay, layoffs, condescening coaches, idiot PR folks.

You can feel it while waiting 30 minutes on deadline for the football coach to finish his team meeting. You can feel it while waiting for the big-league pitcher to return to his locker, like he promised, only to see him hanging out in the training room, doing nothing. Or when the college SID makes you interview the quarterback in his office, with an assistant sitting right beside you.

Every reporter has obstacles. They make us work harder, and the payoff -- when we do get that magic detail, that key quote, etc -- is even greater. But those moments are practically endangered in this business, no matter how hard we work. At the pro level, athletes and organizations realize they no longer need the media. Many have gone to producing their own news on their personal Web sites (that's going to get worse.) And after all that, you come into work and there's an old man berating you because you forgot a comma in the third graf of this morning's story.

Yes, it's the greatest job in the world. But at times, it gets old.

I

 

Pulitzer--how long have you been in the business?

I ask because if you're relatively new, maybe you haven't had that great moment when you know exactly why you got into this...and you know you're in the right place. If you've been around for a long time, and you still feel disconnected and demeaned, you owe it to yourself to find something more rewarding. It's your life.

 

Worst. Haiku. Ever.

 

Happened to be in a town a few weeks ago where a former co-worker is now located. He left to cover a highly ranked college department for a great paper. Read his story that Saturday morning and thought he was doing great. So I called him. To my surprise, he was down, felt like he was just going through the motions. Now, I'd love to be doing his job and as much as I'm sure he is enjoying it, too, this fella thought he was just getting by. Maybe we all have moments of feeling shitty over our work or circumstances.

My idea is to always have two or three projects in the works to look forward to. If I get to one of them, it's a victory. It at least keeps my head above the day-to-day grind which gets to us all. In those small moments, just keep thinking about the positive things coming up, say a prayer, and for God's sake don't gripe about it on a message board!

 

He may have used coarse language, but I think he has a very valid point. If you want to end up winning one of those Pulitzers, you're going to have to put in the work it takes to do it, no matter how "demeaning" you think it is.

No one starts out writing above the fold A1 stories at The New York Times right out of college without cheating [see Blair, Jayson]. If you want the "glory" that comes with the profession, you've got to be willing to pay the price. Otherwise, you're not doing yourself or your readers any favors.