One of the worst days of my life

Told this before I'm sure.

One of our sister papers ran a house ad seeking a "Part-Tim Copy Editor." First qualification was am extensive knowledge of spelling and grammar.

 

Back when papers ran stock tables, I've seen papers run stock pages from the wrong day -- sometimes months off.

 

I've seen postings like that dozens of times, and often worse. The arrogant journo in me is always tempted to scrap the traditional cover letter and send an edited version of the job listing instead.

 

Big basketball postseason tournament in town. First year at the paper, one-man show in sports and nobody at the paper is from the area or has been there very long.

In the preview interviews, a few coaches mention that it's been awhile since a Crappy District team won a game there, because the first round they all play teams from Slightly Less Crappy District, but they can't remember exactly how long. I do some poking around in the archives, and an earlier year's story says something about the tournament being "where no team from Crappy District has won since 199X" eight years ago.

So when Crappy District teams get swept again, that's my lead and my huge headline, how the streak of not winning a game at that tournament was now at nine years. It was wildly factually inaccurate. It had only been about four years since a Crappy team had won there. It had been nine years since a Crappy team had won the entire tournament.

 

It would be an upset if the coaches, AD actually knew the last time a team won a district, region, etc. They're wrong about 99 percent of the time.