Sports reporter, The Associated Press, Detroit

I wonder if the plan is to hire Hogg, but the AP is forced to advertise the position.


How old is Hogg? Could he be reducing his workload?

 

Early 40s.

 

Is the Harry Atkins formerly of Detroit the same one who now gets the occasional byline in SE Georgia? He's covered some events in Savannah and at Georgia Southern. I guess that would explain the "For the Associated Press" tag.

 

Yes.

 

No, not in the least. How old are you, again?

 

Let me see if I'm understanding this right. There are only two people covering all those sports for the AP, correct?

Just two people to cover all the pro teams plus the universities and anything else that comes along?

As someone said on another jobs thread, sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen.

 

There has been one AP sportswriter in DET forever. This will be a second; in that you are correct.

Larry works his ass off but also has an amazing group of stringers (led by Hogg), who do a great percentage of the work.

I forget the official rules, but certain things must have bylines, and Larry's obligated to staff that. He has to do the boatloads of paperwork, too. Other staff writers in buros -- for example, Tim Martin in Lansing (if he's still there) -- are also available to staff the things that need bylines.

Many times if a byline is needed for a big game, stringers will also staff to run quotes and stuff like that.

Larry has a host of crack writers, some of which specialize in one sport (like hockey) and some jump in at certain times of the year to do one or two particular things, like high school swimming.

Small school non-byline stuff is mostly being cut out, but the likes of small college football and all college hockey used to be done in the office off scoresheets.

I always assumed all AP buros were similar, but I also had heard the reason DET was slow to add a second sportswriter was because of the amazing stringer staff.

 

So there is more than one person working in Detroit. That's good.

I was thinking there was just one guy who never could take a day off because he had four major sports to cover.

 

After a long, long search, AP just moved Noah Trister from Little Rock for this gig.

 

No. Fucking. Way.
Hogg got screwed.

 

Slappy: Agreed. This is completely unfair to Hogg. He deserved it, hands down -- and we all (or, most of us) know it.

 

Does anyone know he wanted the job?