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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 18:15:52 GMT
I have zero desire to cover local sports again. Or college or pro sports. I wouldn't want to do it, either. I like sports as a diversion, even though, like I said, I guess it was cool to think about it eight hours a day and get paid for it. I could absolutely cover news, though. I'd love to. After it all, my dream job, all things being equal (they aren't) would still be reporting for the New York Times, Washington Post, or a magazine like the New Yorker.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 18:27:27 GMT
I spent most of my career in news. It was great, especially since I was mostly an assignment editor. My days as the crime and courts reporter almost broke me.
I would love to cover a pro basketball team for one full season. I only covered pros as a pinch hitter.
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Post by xanadu on Nov 8, 2018 18:33:04 GMT
The news side in Trenton was great. Always something riveting in Trenton.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 19:21:58 GMT
I absolutely love my job. Seriously love it. I do community affairs and government relations for a water company. After 7-8 years working as PIO/PAC director for community college and CSU, I'm glad to no longer work for a public agency, which often caused me soul-crushing cognitive dissonance even though I am a staunch supporter of post-secondary ed. On the downside, I have to travel around the state a bit, usually to attend political events or appear at some city council meeting. On the upside, I feel valued by my employer to an extent I have never experienced before. It surprises me how much that means to me. Its a great company that always tries to do the right thing and always tries to do it the right way. I love it. Of course, my wife is also in PR. Neither of us have straight 8-5 jobs. There are lots of early and late meetings and events. It's a constant juggling act. I do not miss newspaper work in the least. I really enjoyed it for years and then grew to hate it. When I was forced to take over as SE, it really turned for me. I enjoyed news more. It was a small paper, and I could not muster a single ounce of interest in high school sports, which is a bad trait in a local SE. I hated it by the end. I was drinking like a lush and just miserable. My SE used to guilt the shit out of us for not wanting to cover preps for the rest of our careers. I guess I understood it to a degree - it was the paper's focus, and I can see being irritated at a bunch of snot-nosed 23-year-olds who think they are too good to cover it. But as someone already with a propensity for self-loathing, being around that didn't help my psychological state. I felt like a failure for covering preps and, at the same time, a huge asshole for wanting to cover something else. It was strange when I left to cover a major college beat, and it was just accepted that readers care more about college sports than preps, so we should cover college sports. (Which is the actual case.) I covered HS sports starting out in NJ as a stringer and then a staffer. I loved it at the time. And I've got nothing against people who enjoy it for their whole careers. I could not enjoy it anymore. It did not hold any interest for me anymore. I wanted to stick with news, and I really disliked going back to sports. I grew to hate it. Had I been better or my career evolved differently, if I'd made some different choices, maybe I would have always loved it had I been able to move on to college or pro sports. A sense of career progression, maybe. I don't know. I just couldn't give a crap about preps anymore. There were plenty of other factors, too. The atrocious compensation, being forced to take over as SE against my wishes, eventually being also tasked with working as SE and evening city editor and then being criticized constantly while I tried to do what had been two complete full-time jobs every evening. Anyway, as Bruce smith would say, that's all water under the dam.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 19:28:49 GMT
My SE used to guilt the shit out of us for not wanting to cover preps for the rest of our careers. I guess I understood it to a degree - it was the paper's focus, and I can see being irritated at a bunch of snot-nosed 23-year-olds who think they are too good to cover it. But as someone already with a propensity for self-loathing, being around that didn't help my psychological state. I felt like a failure for covering preps and, at the same time, a huge asshole for wanting to cover something else. It was strange when I left to cover a major college beat, and it was just accepted that readers care more about college sports than preps, so we should cover college sports. (Which is the actual case.) I covered HS sports starting out in NJ as a stringer and then a staffer. I loved it at the time. And I've got nothing against people who enjoy it for their whole careers. I could not enjoy it anymore. It did not hold any interest for me anymore. I wanted to stick with news, and I really disliked going back to sports. I grew to hate it. Had I been better or my career evolved differently, if I'd made some different choices, maybe I would have always loved it had I been able to move on to college or pro sports. A sense of career progression, maybe. I don't know. I just couldn't give a crap about preps anymore. There were plenty of other factors, too. The atrocious compensation, being forced to take over as SE against my wishes, eventually being also tasked with working as SE and evening city editor and then being criticized constantly while I tried to do what had been two complete full-time jobs every evening. Anyway, as Bruce smith would say, that's all water under the dam. It's fun enough. And there were some opportunities to do really meaningful work for the communities you covered when something controversial popped. There are a lot of enterprise opportunities in preps in everything from public money to injury/concussion/PED issues and so forth. But, ultimately, 90 percent of what you do (1) isn't journalism; (2) doesn't have much of an audience. One or the other would probably be OK, but not both. And it paid like $25K a year to give up your nights and weekends. Thank God I didn't have a way with the ladies at all, or else theoretically I'd have given up a lot of early 20s sex for that job.
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Post by smalltownguy on Nov 8, 2018 19:52:15 GMT
My 3-to-4-day-a-week freelance copyediting gig, at a place I've been at for 13 years as a full-timer and then freelancer, is great for flexibility, good money and I like my co-workers a lot. I can basically work when I want, the work's easy, gives me time to do my writing on my own time and it allows us a lot of time to travel to family overseas and back home in MN. And today the rumor around the office is the company's cutting 40 percent of the staff. Tomorrow. Our mags were sold four months ago and we've all been waiting for this. But 40 percent? I've somehow never been laid off in 21 years of media work, despite working at many places, including this one, that's had a ton of them. If it happens it'll be a bit scary, as this pays well in addition to the flexibility. And going from a two-income family to one in Manhattan is never going to be real appealing. But...maybe it would force me out of the comfort zone/rut that I have fallen into. Still, I'd rather not find out.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 19:59:30 GMT
Thank God I didn't have a way with the ladies at all, or else theoretically I'd have given up a lot of early 20s sex for that job. Now, wait a minute. Journalism hours suck in a lot of ways, but it is the prime schedule for showing up at the bar once everyone is already drunk.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 20:00:18 GMT
Thank God I didn't have a way with the ladies at all, or else theoretically I'd have given up a lot of early 20s sex for that job. Now, wait a minute. Journalism hours suck in a lot of ways, but it is the prime schedule for showing up at the bar once everyone is already drunk. I was too woke to take advantage of those circumstances. #ManAheadOfMyTime
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Post by mizzougrad96 on Nov 8, 2018 21:33:06 GMT
When I was helping cover baseball, I had my girlfriend call me and say she was breaking up with me because there was no way I was working or traveling as much as I said I was. Her timing was perfect since I had just gotten back from a LA-SD-SF road trip. I said "whatever" and hung up the phone.
She called her mom crying and her mom explained to her how datelines worked and that the paper was basically proof that I was where I said I was.
She was a prize. Super cute, but not worth the headache.
I always found journalism to be harder on relationships than it was on meeting people on the road. I'm glad my wife only had to endure NFL travel, and only for a few years. When I was covering baseball/GA/colleges for 9-10 years, it felt like I was on the road more often than I wasn't.
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Post by Da Man on Nov 8, 2018 22:22:52 GMT
When I was helping cover baseball, I had my girlfriend call me and say she was breaking up with me because there was no way I was working or traveling as much as I said I was. Her timing was perfect since I had just gotten back from a LA-SD-SF road trip. I said "whatever" and hung up the phone. She called her mom crying and her mom explained to her how datelines worked and that the paper was basically proof that I was where I said I was. She was a prize. Super cute, but not worth the headache. I always found journalism to be harder on relationships than it was on meeting people on the road. I'm glad my wife only had to endure NFL travel, and only for a few years. When I was covering baseball/GA/colleges for 9-10 years, it felt like I was on the road more often than I wasn't. Even back when I was enthused about working for a newspaper I always said they couldn't pay me enough to be a baseball beat writer.
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Post by mizzougrad96 on Nov 8, 2018 22:31:04 GMT
When I was helping cover baseball, I had my girlfriend call me and say she was breaking up with me because there was no way I was working or traveling as much as I said I was. Her timing was perfect since I had just gotten back from a LA-SD-SF road trip. I said "whatever" and hung up the phone. She called her mom crying and her mom explained to her how datelines worked and that the paper was basically proof that I was where I said I was. She was a prize. Super cute, but not worth the headache. I always found journalism to be harder on relationships than it was on meeting people on the road. I'm glad my wife only had to endure NFL travel, and only for a few years. When I was covering baseball/GA/colleges for 9-10 years, it felt like I was on the road more often than I wasn't. Even back when I was enthused about working for a newspaper I always said they couldn't pay me enough to be a baseball beat writer. I was only a backup, but between Spring training and all the travel, it was awful even for someone in his early 20s. We had two full-timers on the beat and national guy, but we traveled two most of the time and three for divisional road games before football season started. I did it for two years and it was very draining. I have two close friends in their mid-to-late 40s who are still doing it and I have no idea how they can handle it. One of them did every road game last year, which I don't know how he did it with a young kid.
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Post by YankeeFan on Nov 8, 2018 22:32:19 GMT
My goal is to advance my wife’s career to the point where I can quit my job and be a house husband. I would so go for that.
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Post by xanadu on Nov 8, 2018 22:34:00 GMT
Being a national baseball beat guy would be fun for a year or two or three.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 22:37:17 GMT
Being a national baseball beat guy would be fun for a year or two or three. Beats are fun until you have to piss somebody off. Then it absolutely sucks until it's resolved.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 22:37:53 GMT
Being a national baseball beat guy would be fun for a year or two or three. If I have one regret about the business, it's that I didn't try to do that in my 20s. I had an NFL beat for a few years when my boys were younger, but I really think an MLB or even NBA beat would have been pretty great as a young guy. When I was covering the NFL, another paper moved a guy over from the baseball beat. We went to dinner and put out our credit cards to split the check. His was for airline miles; mine was for Toys R Us points.
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