Your Longest Inch Count

I pushed 60-70 once on a story that I was pretty proud of: a stone-deaf middle school football and basketball player and his interpreter, who served as his ears on the court and the field. She had played basketball in college, so she was more in tune with what was being said in huddles and at practices.

"If the coach wants him chewed out, I chew him out with sign language."

 

Well Starman, I thought this crap made me jaded. However, you take the cake friend!

 

During my last months of college, still writing for the local rag, I turned in 65 inches on a men's basketball player who hadn't played one minute but was the center of a messy intra-conference transfer.

Since I moved to my new shop last year, I wrote 45 inches on common injuries sustained by middle-aged weekend warriors (with a 20-inch sidebar on high school girls and torn ACLs), and 40 inches on the mother and family of a Marshall plane crash victim.

Loved working on all of those stories. Wish I could spend that much time on more of them ... some of my most rewarding work.

 

It seems to me the longer the piece and more in-depth you make it, the more satisfying and rewarding the work is. And, because of that, it is usually reflected in the story itself. As I said, I had a 44 inch story, one of my longest, and it won an award and is my favorite story over my 16-year career.

 

Wrote a 12,000 word story for a magazine once. Just wrapped up a 45-inch feature. I think that is the longest I've ever put in a newspaper, but may have had one longer in college.

 

I did a 120-inch takeout a year ago. Funnest story I ever wrote, and I won an award too.

 

12,000 words????? how long is that in column inches??????

 

True story from my days on the sports desk back East:

Takeout writer submits a 90-inch profile of a noted coach. Story was scheduled to run on a Sunday but got held for whatever reason and was reskedded for, I think, a Wednesday, when there was room for little more than half the yarn.

So, Tuesday night, the layout editor (today we'd call him the designer) calls the author at home and tells him, "Geez, this is a great piece, but it's awfully unwieldy for the newshole we have tomorrow. Can we work together here over the phone to make trims?"

Author says, "Sure. Do a search for a graph that starts, `Coach was very happy ... ' "

Editor does the search and finds that `Coach was very happy ... ' starts the penultimate graph.

"Got it," he says to the author.

"Good. Delete the word `very' then resize it. That should do it."

 

I wrote a 500-inch piece once, but all the words were stacked on top of each other

 

I've had about three at about 60 -- all at the same paper. I did features on all the boys basketball teams in the area that went to the state finals; an all-time all-area basketball team; and a feature on a high jumper who fought back from drug abuse.

 

85-inch feature on a former prep football stay who was in a coma. Talked to about 20 people that knew him.
SE was expecting about half the size, as was the news-side types, who were pissed the story was running in the A section.

 

Fantastic story.