Your Longest Inch Count

I've never gone over 30. This day in age most people aren't going to read over 20. Why bother, it's a waste of your time unless it's really compelling.

 

Yeah, Huckleberry ... though (as I sit in my home office with my state and national awards on the wall behind me ... ) awards are again a by-product. The story that won an award tonight generated about 60 letters to the editor and/or writer thanking us for writing it, the town publicly decreeing to honor the story's subjects, and the state legislature to honor the subjects via proclamation.

 

Heh ... was in college, 40 inches on the football coach getting fired. Started on the main front then jumped to the sports front and inside.

Haven't read it in a while, I'm sure it's way overwritten. I was just overjoyed at getting the story -- it broke on publication day and I was able to gather enough string to run with it even though the AD was specifically holding the release for a day to avoid publication. (It was the last edition of the semester and we would've been holding the bag until January if we couldn't run it then.)

Got the coach in his office while he was packing up his things.

Same coach who'd called me up to ream me out for my season preview being too negative. Then they proceeded to go 1-9.

 

We had a guy once write a 37-inch SIDEBAR. He included every freaking thing the guy told him, such as his mom bakes him chocolate chip cookies and sends them to him on the road. The damn thing was 15 inches longer than the main.

 

37 inch side bar?? now that's what I call verbose. sure it wasn't buckweaver moonlighting?

 

If we're doing our job right, people will read longer stories. As a former editor of mine said, "I've read 60-inch stories that feel like they're 15 inches. And I've read 15-inch stories that feel like they're 60 inches."

My longest: 114. It's the best thing I've ever done, and it has won awards. It's the one story of mine I can read over and over and not get bored. If I had to do it all over again, it would be 114 inches.

 

I've won plenty of awards but almost all of them have been in the 32-35 inch range. I did have a feature that was 44 inches win an award one year --- and it's probably the best story I have ever written.

 

I followed a football team and its coaching staff for a week, going to practices, film sessions, night practices, all while doing my regular layout stuff, too. I caught a fairly heavy cold and was exhausted at the end of the week.

Of course, the day after it ran, some girls swim parents started carpet-bombing my voicemail.

Don't remember the inch count, but it was 9,000 words. I won first place in a MPA contest, and I was totally stunned, because I'm always being told that people won't read long stories.

 

Did the guy cut his wrists after that?

For one of our football special sections at my last paper, I wrote a 68-inch story on the lack of Hispanic head football coaches in a predominantely Hispanic region of SoCal. It was a story I left a kidney on the table reporting and writing. Editor comes up to me and says I've got to cut 15 inches out of it.

I cut the 15 inches out of it... and wanted to cry. Never had cutting a story been so painful.

The longest story: 110 inches on the history of HS football in our area (dating to 1916) for the 1999 tab. It ran nearly word-for-word.

 

I've written a few 80-100-inch special section and magazine pieces (a couple of which won awards), but I don't know if I would again; I think I'd try to break things up into a 40-60 inch mainbar and a couple 20-inch siders. Of course, a lot of it would depend on the format and the subject matter. Some things are worth 120 inches; some things aren't worth 8.

 

So, still about 4 1/2 inches? Bummer.

Had some 40-inch features, but I generally try not to get diarrhea of the hands when doing stories. If I had something which warranted it, I'm sure I could crank out a long one.

And with others, cutting 97 inches to 45 is impressive. That story must have sucked some real ass.

 

I wrote a 3,500 word story last year - a narrative on a day in the life of the referees who pass through our local hockey rink on a given Saturday. We split it into two sections. We don't work on inch counts here, and I forget the formula. You guys will have to let me know.