When part timers go bad

Time is short I have an appointment at noon, at noon in hell.

 

If you can't see the difference between a heralded piece of writing by a well-known and respected writer and posting something by a part-timer that is being held up for ridicule...well, then, I guess there's nothing anyone else can say.

 

Jesus, I'd hire that guy in a heartbeat compared to what I have to work with.

 

We had a part-timer, decent writer, would take any assignment. On one of the last days of our Low-A Baltimore Orioles affiliate's season, he went to the press box, wearing a N.Y. Yankees jersey. Drank (depending on the report you get) between three and six beers, then went to the clubhouse for interviews. I had to spend my last night at the park that season apologizing to every team employee, player and coach I saw.

 

Seriously, I know of papers where the full-time veteran sports editor writes this badly.

 

I knew of an 85K shop where three PT photogs got fired for running a porn site off of an office computer. I'm glad I got out of there a loooooong time ago.

 

That always amazes me as well. I've seen my share of former SEs who have poor writing habits and technique. Now, I've never seen one write THAT poorly, but some have come close.

 

My first job, I was at a little daily where there were two of us in sports -- the SE who was in his 50s and me. We had a couple of part-timers who mostly did OK. One Friday afternoon during football season a woman came in to talk to the SE because she was interested in doing photo freelancing. She had no sports background or even any real writing background. She was a photographer, but she was interested in picking up whatever work we could toss to her.

Next thing I know, the SE has her typing up bowling agate. And then he had her working the phones and taking football results, with basically no real instruction. He just had her come in that same Friday night and start working.

So you can guess where this is going ... her copy was a disaster. Guess who got to fix that? As I'm sitting with her trying to make sense of what she gave us, I realize that she's got the score of one of the games wrong. She's got it reversed, with the wrong team winning. Well, we ran a list of high school football scores on A-1, which had already been sent to composing. So we had to re-make the front page. Very easily among the most frustrating nights I've had in this business.

 

A summer intern was sent to cover a high school baseball playoff game. The meat of his story was that the starting pitcher was determined to get a complete game. He took an 8-2 lead into the last inning, then gave up a three-run homer and a two-run homer, but still held on to win, 8-7.
We were flooded with e-mails the next day. Our guy neglected to noticed that the starter didn't pitch the last inning. A different guy gave up the homers. There was a quote from the coach that, therefore, didn't make sense and a couple of other mistakes in the story that weren't apparent enough to be caught by the desk on deadline.
The day following, his supervisor tosses him the paper and said, "Here's your first contribution to the front page." He was talking about the massive correction that had to be run.