Was it the assignment to spend Christmas Eve with a lonely security guard -- and live-blog the experience? Please post your worst holiday story assignments in the comments section, below. Send e-mail via gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com].Monday, December 01, 2008
Holidaze: I'm collecting awful holiday story ideas!
Thanksgiving's aftermath: Big newspapers, no news, understaffed newsrooms -- and dopey story ideas from editors desperate to fill the paper. But, hey: 'Tis the season, right?
Was it the assignment to spend Christmas Eve with a lonely security guard -- and live-blog the experience? Please post your worst holiday story assignments in the comments section, below. Send e-mail via gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com].
Was it the assignment to spend Christmas Eve with a lonely security guard -- and live-blog the experience? Please post your worst holiday story assignments in the comments section, below. Send e-mail via gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com].
15 comments:
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I've got one:
ReplyDeletehttp://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/holidaze-im-collecting-awful-holiday.html
1:16 pm: LOL!
ReplyDeleteMy lazy editor just thumbs through USA Today and makes us localize whatever stupid trend story is hot that particular day. That's what we call "enterprise" at my paper.
ReplyDeleteMy worst one was the re-enactment of Washington crossing the Delaware the year it was so cold that the river police wouldn't let boats in the water. The wind chill factor was something like 30 below and the re-enactors just walked across the bridge. Sometimes the CN just took this dopey annual event off the wire, other times an unlucky reporter got the Christmas Day assignment.
ReplyDeleteWell, this isn't an awful holiday story, but it's a good story, so perhaps you'll forgive it being a bit off-topic.
ReplyDeleteIn the early '90s I was an assistant metro editor in Westchester. Over the holiday week between Xmas and New Year's -- it must have been 1992 -- we had a big blizzard. Not enough to shut everything down entirely, but enough to slow things down quite a bit and make everything pretty.
We had a thin staff, nothing of real import happening, so I sent one of our young feature writers out in the morning one day and told her to just look around and do a slice of life story.
She came back and wrote a lovely, charming story that really captured the wonder that sometimes settles on a community in the wake of a beautiful winter storm -- kids sledding, people shoveling walks for their elderly neighbors, etc. She did a wonderful job and I was very pleased.
The next day, when the story ran, she came to me, very upset. Someone had been killed in a car accident on a slippery road the day before, and so a reader called her and reamed her out, berating her -- "how can you write about sledding when people are dying," that sort of thing. It was completely over the top, but she wasn't used to getting that sort of abuse and it bothered her.
I assured her that she shouldn't feel bad, people die every day, it doesn't mean you can't tell the other, happier stories of life.
But that reporter did all right in the long run. It was Janice Min, now the $3 million-a-year editor of People magazine.
Good story, John!
ReplyDeleteI'm getting in shape -- hoping to take over the "Rest of the Story" gig from Paul Harvey when his embalming fluid finally leaks away.
ReplyDeletehahahahahahaha
ReplyDeletehahahahhahahaha
thx, I needed a good laugh
Not a Thanksgiving or Christmas story, but another dumb holiday story.
ReplyDeleteFor the Fourth of July, one of the editors came up with the idea of writing about baseball. What could be more American than that? Except, I got assigned to go to a community softball tournament 30 miles away.
I was the only reporter on that day, so I started in the afternoon because I also had to cover the fireworks and festival at dusk (when my assignment was equally as riveting).
The editor who assigned going to that tournament, didn't check to see how long the tournament would last or how many teams had even signed up. I got there after the last (of two teams!) had cleared the field. Again, I'd driven quite a distance. I spotted the umpire (a person I actually knew as a source off my beat) who helped me gather the teams, which had settled into the back of a pick-up for some beer.
I turned a decent story about the pastime, especially considering I didn't see a single pitch. But I've never trusted an assignment that editor put in again.
Rudolph will be shown in 'hd' this year - wait til someone decides that's worthy of a story at your local appliance mart....
ReplyDeleteHow the frock do they make a 30 year old picture high definition, anyway?
This was in the late 90s at the Courier-Journal. Being fairly well up in metro desk seniority, I was not assigned to work Christmas, until the junior person who was assigned the night shift quit a week or two before the holidays. The nasty piece of work that was the Metro Editor at the time, whose main function seemed to be to reduce payroll by making the more experienced reporters so miserable with his idiotic assignments, ham-handed editing and abusive personality, decided I would pull the shift - never mind seniority, never mind having guests from out of town, etc. I ended up going over to the newly-opened riverboat casino nearby to find out what kind of people would spend Christmas playing the slots. Most miserable holiday shift in 18 years in the newsroom. Left with smoke-filled lungs, ringing ears and a determination to get the hell out of C-J at the first decent opportunity. Which I did the next year. But Bozo the Editor was a stunning success - managed to run off better than 150 years of collective reporting experience in about 18 months. Somewhat surprisingly, he never made it to corporate....
ReplyDeleteAssignment, courtesy of a shaky handed regional editor who eventually left journalism to become a farmer: Find out who rides public transportation in our community on this particular holiday.
ReplyDeleteAnswer: No one!
Still the only time I've ever not come back with a story.
Oops, I have to make a correction -- Janice Min is editor of US Weekly, not People.
ReplyDeleteYou can tell I don't read either of 'em very religiously.
Thanks for the chuckles, journalists.
ReplyDelete"The editor who assigned going to that tournament, didn't check to see how long the tournament would last or how many teams had even signed up."
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like something the writer should have checked. Perhaps that's the point you make in a subtle fashion at the end.
"Answer: No one!
Still the only time I've ever not come back with a story."
That sounds like it would have been a story, though.
Also, why post these stories anonymously?