on 4/9/02 20:25, Bloomquist, Bret at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I have a staff of five full-time employees trying to write, edit and produce
> a six-page sports section seven days a week, 365 days a year. If you're
> interested in this type of thing, you must have a college degree, be willing
> to work 55 hour weeks, work on Christmas eve and Christmas day, and be
> willing to start at $21,000 a year
Compared with most British provincial papers you are overstaffed and
overpaid!
As for the rest, that's the lot of the journalist... if you don't like the
heat, get out of the kitchen. But I suspect you do like the heat and you
wouldn'tbe too happy if the presuure was eased.
When I wrote about mistakes being made I meant obvious, unforgiveable
mistakes, mistakes born of stupidity. Not the natural ones that can occur
from time to time.
I'll give you an instance. A friend of mine was sent by the Daily Mail to
cover the Grand Prix in Brussels back in the 1980s. Amazingly it was the
first time in a 15 year career of sports reporting that he'd been to a track
and field meeting.
"It's easy this athletics reporting, I've just got to watch out from Steve
Cram and Kirsty Wade," he said. I told himn that track and field can leap up
and bite you on the bum when you least expect it.
Sure enough, first up was the steeplechase and Colin Reitz took one and a
half seconds off the British record. I filled him in on Colin Reitz and
assured him that one and a half seconds was an awful lot.
Later I heard him filing copy (this was the days before laptops) and he
said" :Colin Reitz sliced one and a half MINUTES from the British record."
I tapped him on the shoulder to correct him and he said: "do you mind, I'm
giving copy."
So I left him alone and told him of his stupid mistake half an hour later. I
hope his first edition hadn't gone but if someone in the future asked for
cuttings from the Daily Mail library they might see that Reitz took one and
a half minutes off the British record.
That mistake was caused by the Sports editor and the reporter thinking that
track and field is an easy sport to cover.
Randall Northam
