Today's nitpicking question: datelines

Reminds me ... one high school that I used to cover, the high school athletic fields out back were in another town. Got some curious comments about using the "proper" dateline in stories.

 

Yep, Wake Forest University used to be in Wake Forest. For those of you not familiar to N.C., that's in the eastern part of Wake County, good 1/2 hour east of Raleigh and N.C. State.
The story I was told when I moved here years ago was that some businessmen in Winston-Salem wanted a college, so built a campus then lured Wake Forest away.
I've driven by the old campus many times. It's not nearly as bad as Mystery Meat makes it out to be. But it's not good either.

 

A few years ago, I covered the local af2 team in CITY A. When they went on the road, I would write a "pre-" story to run the day of the away game and my editor would dateline it for being from the city where CITY A was playing.

Personally, I loved it.....I understood some might not like it, but I loved it.

What do editors think of that?

 

Seriously, you should NEVER do that. It's tantamount to lying to your readers. That dateline tells people that's where you are. If you're not there, then it's totally and unequivocally wrong. Not even a question.

 

This guy asks for the next question.

 

that would be dateline MOORESTOWN

 

Not just "some" businessmen ... it was the fine folks at RJR Tobacco. The Reynolds family basically built a campus in Winston-Salem, N.C., then lured away Wake Forest University from its original location in Wake Forest, N.C. I've never been to the old campus, but spent, oh, about four years at the new campus. And I can say without a doubt that no recruiters have to take prospective students to Duke anymore. Wake's campus is one of the prettiest in the South.

 

To get back to some of the original points, you should NEVER dateline a story unless you were actually there. Not sure how I can emphasize that more.

When I first started writing I didn't know any better, so I datelined EVERYTHING. I thought it would help the readers and be informative. My editor quickly pointed out that you don't get a dateline if you were never physically at that location.

And moving backward, I think you dateline the city/municipality where the school or athletic fields are located. Therefore, Stanford is in Palo Alto, Ole Miss is in Oxford, Notre Dame is in South Bend, etc. Just because the University incorporates itself to get its own mailing address and zip code doesn't make that its actual location.

 

Just so I'm clear on this. Say I've covered a Saturday afternoon game on the road. I write my second-day on the airplane on the way home. Dateline or no?

 

Depends.

Is it all stuff you compiled at the scene? Dateline.

End of the week note dump, follow/preview? No dateline.

 

no dateline if there's no availability the day you write it

 

Wow.

I've come to appreciate the sanctity of the dateline, in no small part because of this board. But man, if you're drawing lines like that ... no offense, but THAT sounds more anal than common-sense.

Dateline is to indicate you were at the event, right? Well, say I was at the event, and that's where I collected all the quotes and the information. This would seem no different to me than covering a game, driving back to the office and using the dateline of where I was.