My Boss Screamed at Me Tonight

Interesting stuff. Played out dramatically. I give it a B+.

We old-timer farts like to look back on the good old days when printers threw X-acto blades in the general direction of page editors, and a night wasn't complete without some copy editor screaming his lungs out at some poor writer. And yes, that WAS the dynamic in the '60s, '70s, early '80s newsroom.

Thing is, I never accepted that as effective or proper. Yelling is a counter-productive way of dealing with deadlines, stress or anger.

In fact, I've long thought that people who just lose it have a self-control problem. If you can't keep it together any better than that, either you're opening your mouth without thinking, or there's something else the matter with you.

Back to NightOwl's specific situation (NightOwl (n): 1. Former member of sportsjournalists.com).

Like a few others, I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that there didn't seem to be any provisions made for a late game. Man, that's what first edition is for. Plug that baby at 6:30 p.m. and tell your writer, take your time and make it good by midnight.

 

mr. bubbler, in all due humblility, shouldn't that be the other way around?

 

I would think any section ed or whoever else is in charge of planning a nightly section would have a contigency plan for late night games period.

What if the ballgame you're sending someone to cover turns out like that Rochester-Pawtucket game? Surely you have an AP story you can use to fill that hole. Or perhaps you have an evergreen piece you can throw there. Or stand-alone art. Something.

 

Meh. I don't shit a give.

 

Brilliant.

 

Little boy: Mr. Nightowl, how many screams does it take to get yourself nuked?

Mr. Nightowl: Let's see, one scream, two screams, three screams! Three!

 

I too was the target of a married owner/publisher team. My stint there started well, but went downhill. I won't go into all the details, but the wife sent me a one-page letter of what a horrible job I did and even my photos were completely unusable. (If you saw what passed for photos in that paper otherwise, you'd be in hysterics.)

Even funnier, I had more newspaper knowledge in my little finger than the two of them did together. Not to mention a lot longer time in the biz than them.

I sure would have loved to see their reaction when I got my current gig.

 

Two editions, 10:30 and 12:40. And we're plugging for anything that's in doubt for 10:30, because we can't dump out eight pages after 10 p.m. So a lot of local stuff, we can give writers even past midnight, maybe 12:15.

One thing the public will never realize: The death of the schoolkid newspaper carrier killed West Coast boxes for East Coast newspapers. Now, we have a bunch of adults with vans who usually have a second daytime job and won't stand for the final editions to be packed on their vehicles at 2:30 a.m. When I started, we were 1:45 a.m. for final edition.

 

Still 11:30, Moddy.