Your Longest Inch Count

This is ending far too well.

 

Yep. It was an epic. A lot of big photos, too. If I ever did it again, I'd have done a lot of things differently. But a lot of people read it all the way through, apparently, including the contest judges. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't totally surprised when it won, because of the length.

 

The first time my smallish suburban paper ventured into takeouts with color photos for the weekend edition, sports was assigned the story. Writer was told there was no space limitation. He wrote 60. When it gets dummied, he's got 40, so he cut it. Then it gets redummied and pasted up (this is cold type days). They've got the page with the type stuck on it. They hand him a blue pen and tell him he needs to cut 10 more inches. He pulls his byline off it, says "cut it wherever you want" and heads for the parking lot.
My longest was about 100 inches with about 12 breakouts. During the 1994 baseball strike, I wrote a feature on a Class-A league that was thriving. There were six teams located within a one- or two-hour drive from our circulation area. Basically, if you miss baseball, this is what's available.

 

96 inches on the 20-year reunion of a back-to-back state championship team that was ranked No.2 in the country by USA Today. I won a state press association award for best in depth sports story.

 

250 inches broken up over 2 weeks.

 

Wow... the longest story I've ever written is in the 1,200-1,300 word range. The second longest clocked in at just over 1,000 words. What that translates to in column inches I'm not certain.

 

500 words at my shop = 15 inches. Therefore ... 1,000 words = 30 inches, or the length of a Division I=A football gamer at my shop.

rb

 

Same with me but for all we know this guy writes in 15-point type.

 

I've done a bunch of 40-50 inchers, but I don't think I've ever approached 100.

 

65-inch story on a football player who battled through some legal and personal problems to finish his college football career. two days after it ran he was suspended from the team ... nice.

 

Did a 50-inch story.
That's been years ago....steadily worked my way back up (mastered telling extremely meaty stories in just 30 inches...not easy) - recently did a 45-inch feature on Easter.

 

wrote a couple for the college paper that were pushing 35 inches...

my SE at my part-time job in college didn't believe in long stories. State championship gamers would get 10 inches, Sunday centerpiece features would get 18 tops... so I learned to write tight...

now, at this job, I've got the flexibility to write longer, but I'll be damned if that last SE didn't burn tightness into my brain. I'm finding myself running out of steam at 16-17 inches no matter what the story or subject...