By TIM TROWER
One thing we’ve done in recent years is commission freelancers to write notes packages or sidebars on Oregon and Oregon State football games to supplement game stories we get from the Associated Press. There’s mucho interest in the teams, and we don’t have the manpower to hit them ourselves and still manage the busy prep days here, so outsourcing is the way to go. Sometimes it’s a breeze to line up a stringer. Sometimes not so much. No matter, I thought I’d share the process here.
When the Ducks and Beavers have home games, we have fairly regular writers up north to help us if we’re not going ourselves. When the teams are on the road, it can get dicey. The process is usually the same: I procrastinate, then finally contact newspapers where the Ducks and Beavers are playing; I apologize to the sports editor for the short notice, then outline what we’re looking for. We want about 20 inches, three to five note items, with the lead item a bit meatier and with quotes (as opposed to bullet items) and different from the AP game angle. I tell them our deadline and what we pay, and they take it from there.
It’s rare that folks on the other end aren’t cooperative, no matter how big their own operation is. Most began at small papers and are familiar with the challenges. And, the odds are they do the same thing. Oftentimes, one of their own staffers will handle the assignment, which makes it easy. Otherwise, I likely have to line up press credentials and, with luck, parking passes for our freelancer to pick up at Will Call. This, too, usually works out, but sometimes it’s a close shave.
With the Beavers in Salt Lake City for a Thursday game (not good for a procrastinator) against Utah, and Oregon in Los Angeles Saturday to face USC in a battle of Top-25 teams, the process was put to the test. I actually made contact with an LA Times editor last week about the Duck game. We’ve known each other since attending a seminar together about a decade ago, and he’s always been helpful. This time, “Hollywood,” as he was dubbed at said seminar, was grumpy — his word, not mine. When pressed early this week about the freelancer, he said he’d tried no fewer than nine people and got mostly, “Can I let you know … ?” He was pulling out what little hair he has left — a reason for his grumpiness, he allowed — to not only help me but to get his own ducks in a row (pun intended). In an e-mail, he said, “As you might imagine, it’s manic here with Dodgers, Angels and both college teams at home.”
Nevertheless, Hollywood came through in red-carpet fashion. He hooked me up with Victoria, whom you can read in Sunday’s paper. She’s a veteran writer who will be running quotes for the AP at UO-USC game. The beauty of that is she’ll know exactly what angle the AP writer is taking and isn’t likely to duplicate.
The Beaver game, now that was different. I fired e-mails to sports editors at the two Salt Lake City papers on Tuesday and heard back from The Deseret News. My man there had little trouble lining up a capable writer — one who is part of their coverage team for the Utah Jazz — but the press pass was another matter. Our freelancer got the very last one Utah had to offer. “Phew!” he wrote in an e-mail. All part of the game, I shrugged.
Sometimes I’m lining up writers or credentials between golf swings on a day off, sometimes from home, sometimes while on out-of-area trips, you name it. Three years ago, I mapped out details for a Duck game with folks at the Houston Chronicle while writing a Southern Oregon Golf Tournament story from a Rogue Valley Country Club banquet room. Last week, the person the Spokane, Wash., paper helped me get was a former boss of mine. He was the sports editor my first year on the staff of the Oregon State student paper, the Barometer, in the late 70s. Other networking has put me in touch faraway folks who have ties to the Rogue Valley or visit occasionally.
In the end, we always seem to get the story. Even if all heck is breaking out in LA, even if all the seats are filling fast in Salt Lake City.
