Behind the Headlines

The guys who work in our sports department – Ron, Jeff, Niles and Jason – with occasional help from Doug - have the craziest work schedules of anybody in the newsroom with the exception of the photographers.

The sports department’s day during the work week starts before 7 a.m. Throughout the morning, they are taking phone calls from coaches, compiling scores, reviewing photos and getting the day’s sports reports ready for everyone to read in the afternoon.

But they’re not in the office during early and mid-afternoon. They’ll be back in the evening.

The sports writers work odd hours because their job is to track schedules and results and write feature stories for local recreational, high school, college and professional sports. Most of these events take place after school, on the evening or during the weekends. They personally attend some of those events, sending blog reports from the scene or making sure a story deadline is met for the next publication. To get scores and reports from other meets and games in time for the next edition, they rely on a complicated network of faxes, e-mails, deliveries and phone calls from coaches and athletic directors.

So it really irks me when a customer stops by my desk during the sports department’s break and complains about the sports writers being out of the office during the afternoon. I have even heard more than one customer say, “I wish I had those kind of hours.”

Umm, I really don’t think so.