Is what we do demeaning?

Sounds like a lot of people are writing stories that don't particularly interest them. If they don't interest you, why do you think they'd interest anyone else?

 

That's when I feel the most demeaned -- when I'm writing something that I don't much care about and on top of that, get some attitude from a coach or player. I just feel like throwing my hands up and saying why bother?

The key is finding stories that they give me that feeling to where even if I have to deal with some attitude I'm still going after the story. It's hard feeling that way on every piece though.

 

I never thought of our profession as demeaning. We chronicle other people’s lives for a living. That’s more humbling than demeaning, and that’s not a bad thing.

What never gets old is how cool our families and friends feel our jobs are. They only see the positives in it, but so what.

 

It's funny.

I love newspaper work, and I love teaching.

For me -- and it's a personal thing -- teaching is harder in more ways than newspaper work is.

Also . . .

Tell people you're a reporter, especially sports, and they tell you how lucky you are.

Tell them you teach, and you get sympathy or "Bless you."

Funny thing is, I get complaints from parents in either job.

 

I grew up in a Friday Night Football household. Was going to high school games with my teacher dad from the year of my birth until, literally, this past year.

Friday Night shaped so much of who I am. Each Friday my dad would fill a red thermos with red Kool-Aid and dump the popcorn directly from the stove into a brown paper grocery bag, where the salt would settle into the creases at the bottom before the first quarter ended. We'd grab the school color bleacher seats and take up residence in the "high" seats on the 50 yard line, where on good nights we could see the moon rise over the mountains.

The local high schools played in the college stadium, giving events more of an authentic feel than any school district metal bleachers could. In the days before extreme security, my dad would take us on the field after the game to meet the players that he taught. Being down on the field - which smelled of grass and mud and sweat - and looking up at the press box was surreal to a little kid, as it was one of the tallest buildings in town.

Those high school kids were deified in my world. My dad would bring home autographs of the star players on the blank undersides of hall pass sheets and I would tack them up on my bulletin board. Those quarter sheets of paper would make my bedroom smell like the risograph machines they had been printed on.

A defiant tomboy, the only time I would voluntarily don a skirt was on Fridays, when I could wear the little high school cheerleading outfit my mother sewed for me. The one that has now been passed down through two generations of teachers daughters. I still have the bottle of glitter nail polish in school colors.

Friday Nights were the big social event in the community. Students, families, fans, mothers who strangely resembled the female, middle-aged versions of their player sons in those replica jerseys. The band boosters would bring crock pots stuffed with simmering local favorites with the dual mission of feeding the fans, family style, and making a few bucks.

As I grew up, I went from learning the game at my father's knee to embracing the social stadium. From watching playmakers with a bird's-eye view to making out with leather jacket-wearing boys behind that press box. The red thermos of Kool-Aid was replaced with hidden flasks of whatever ungodly concoction could be smuggled into the stadium.

I still loved the football -- followed by basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring, which my dad brought me to as well -- and years later use the bragging rights I feel entitled to from attending a school with a football dynasty. I still have the local newspaper clipping from the state championship my junior year.

Friday Nights didn't end when I went to college. I could always count on my dad to call with scoring summaries at the end of the night, and I moved mountains to come back for the big rivalry game at the end of each season.

I don't think I really felt comfortable in my new college town until I covered my first Friday Night game as a stringer for the local paper. I wrote up maybe eight inches, but I remember how good it felt to go to the game and be important, to have a purpose. And how sad I was to be at a game and not know a soul.

I don't know why I keep those hall pass autographs or the bottle of separated, goopy nail polish in my childhood memory trunk. Maybe I do. Maybe I still miss those Friday Nights of my childhood, when I was watching instead of working. When I could be a fan and wear school colors and yell until I had no voice the next day.

Maybe I got into this business so I wouldn't have to grow up.

Perhaps in that way I am no better than the star quarterback who sits at the bar a dozen years later and relives his accomplishments, night after night. I am clinging to a youth that can never be reclaimed by once again deifying high school players on fields that smell like grass and mud and sweat. People moved on, became accountants or doctors or teachers or parents, but I could only stick with what I knew, which was Friday Night.

I have had moments where I have felt this job was demeaning. Sometimes I feel I have demeaned myself, my education, my abilities, by choosing this line of work. Sometimes I disagree with the level of media coverage that high school players and teams get, even when I'm the one providing that coverage.

But I realize that if I wasn't doing it, someone else would. This job is not going to go away if I choose to leave it. So I stay, because there is nobody else who understands Friday Night the way I do. There is nobody that I would entrust to get it right.

 

Great story, Cadet.

 

yeah, cadet, i enjoyed that.

 

Holy crap, Cadet!

That was beautiful, lyrical even.

Reading it, I felt like I was at the stadium.

And that, boys and girls, is why we play the game - or at least why we're supposed to.

Because for all the BS we go through, it still should matter to us. And when it doesn't, it's time to find something else to do for a living.

Yeah, I totally get what J_D is saying and I go through the same kind of BS on my beat.

And still, the satisfaction that comes from getting right in an environment where getting it right is tougher every year, outweighs the egos and the control freaks and the assholes who try to keep me from doing my job.

 

Cadet, that was a fantastic story. I hope to be reading it in your paper at some point soon.

 

are you advocating cadet to out herself?

 

Nope. Just saying that good writing deserves as many eyes as possible.