What constitutes a "helluva sports editor?"

I can say that after four years, a helluva sports editor has nothing to do with what mine brings.
Refuses to allow due time off, forced extra hours and lies about comp time, won't read stories when they are in during the day but will second guess with the best of them. Hates preps until he gets a complaint. The ASE's go over his head to the Editor and EE so often, he has footprints on his scalp.
If our desk staff ever documents owed time off and wanted to make an issue of it, this guy would be fired in a heartbeat.
The very definition of an empty suit. So what ever makes a "helluva sports editor," this guy has none of it.

 

Worse. While I don't much care for him, I - and everyone else on staff - don't respect him, either personally or professionally.
This isn't a podunk daily, this is a 100,000+ paper.
I might not like you, but if I respect you, I can live with that.
This guy does nothing for his staff to earn their respect.
As I said, an empty suit.

 

That's a windy way to answer Moddy's question... a simple "hell, no" would have sufficed.

 

True, but venting was theraputic.

 

My second sports editor was literally hired from from where he worked as an assistant manager at a grocery store. Somehow, he had worked at the paper as a clerk at some point and had a friend there. Whatever.

He was a decent human being. And that was it.

And I have no lack of ego in saying this: The hard thing for several of us on the staff was that we were all about 10 times more talented and insightful than the guy in charge. And that guy would do something like -- aw, hell, he did it to me: He sent me down to Miami to cover the Steelers-Cowboys (Jackie Smith) Super Bowl run-up. And then he parachuted in on game day to do the game story, which was simply awful.

He eventually left the business, which is as it should have been.

 

I've had six in almost four years.

 

The guy I worked for in New Mexico was just like this. Lied to get me out there, threw me to the wolves when I did get out there in terms of dumping as much work on me as he could... then -- since he had been promoted to ME, but still liked writing sports -- would parachute in and cherry-pick stories. Especially if he needed a trip to Albuquerque.

Or he'd give them to one of the news reporters -- since I was a one-person department -- and make me design and edit five pages for the Sunday paper. He did this, knowing that design work was my weakness and that I could write circles around anyone -- including him -- on the staff.

Aside from lying his ass off to get me out there, the most classless thing he did -- and given his track record, this was a pretty big matzah ball to bite off -- was to "forget" to submit my entries to the Panhandle Press Assn. writing contest.

Not surprisingly, he won one of the awards in a category I would have buried him in if my stories had been submitted.

Needless to say, when it comes to describing "a helluva sports editor," this guy laps liberally from Fenian's Lake O' Fail.

 

Man, is that low.

The aforementioned guy helped get us all entered in the Florida contest, at least -- but couldn't understand why he never beat the people who worked for him.

 

If he wears a suit, he's ahead of 99 percent of other sports editors, though.

 

so, mizzou, are you saying a good sports editor is someone who can spot coachable talent?