On a cold, late-January day in 1994 Ron Wagner wrote his first newspaper article. The assignment was to cover the East Henderson girls and boys basketball games. The goal: Don't throw up in public, forget to write down anything crucial or piss off any coaches.
Well, one out of three ain't bad. I only threw up a little, but it was in my mouth.
I'm not sure what I expected in the way of training, but be at the gym at 6:30 and write something about what happens wasn't it (turns out, those are actually perfect instructions for reporters, as I found out later). I didn't exactly feel prepared, and I also hadn't realized just how much I would dread interviewing the coaches. In fact, I can honestly say that going up and instigating coversations with strangers was hands down the hardest part of the job for me.
That unsure, aloof, know-it-all manner is probably why East girls coach Kristy Kremer misinterpreted my question about her team's play.
"Did you ever think about changing to a zone when the other team kept hitting outside shots," I asked earnestly between nervous stammers and licking my lips like John Wayne Gacy at a Boy Scout convention.
"Who is this little cocksucker?" she thought. At least, that's what I found out later when she, somewhat ironically, became a co-worker. At the time, I just thought she was a bitch.
The boys game went by like a blur, or at least as blurry as 5-9, 140-pound white people with no athletic ability playing basketball can be. I thought I'd handled my panic attacks pretty well, but the adrenaline surged anew when I got back to the office and found out Tuesday was an early deadline night. I had 45 minutes to transcribe quotes from four coaches, type box scores and write something coherent. And I did a great job, too, until Thomas pointed out one small flaw in my work:
"What was the score?"
Damn! Shit! Fuck! The numbers were everywhere. My handwriting was incomprehensible. Paper fluttered, panic surged ... here they were! And other than that small omission, my writing got rave reviews. So much so that when my dad looked at the story the next day he pondered carefully before coming up with just the right Wagner compliment:
"Welp, reads just like a newspaper article," he said before putting the paper down to look for something that was actually interesting.
They like me! They really like me!
And we were off.
Friday, October 16, 2009
The hiring process
Hello. My name is Ron, and I'm a recovering newspaperman; errr, person. Which explains why I'm writing a blog for no money - that counts as"recovery" for journalists these days.
How did I end up in such a prestigious profession, you might ask? It all started with my mom cutting out a classified ad for a "part-time sports writer" at the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times-News. It sounds like she was being nice, but the truth is it was just another way for her to illustrate how lazy she thought I was. Boy, those six months after I graduated from college and moved back home were good times, good times. But I digress.
I really did need another job. I was working in a local hospital's materials management office, and there were absolutely no remotely cute girls in that complex left for me to flirt with. Besides, how hard could writing for a paper be? I liked sports, and people used to laugh all the time at the stories I wrote in high school English classes. You can't teach that, I figured.
Still, to cover all the bases left open by my complete lack of professional or educational training, I went to the library and checked out not one but two books on journalism. "Who, what, why, where, when and how." Well, I'll be damned. That's good to know.
Sports editor Bob Dalton called me in for an interview/writing test shortly thereafter, and when I walked into the room holding the other candidates I was immediately impressed - by the weirdness of people who write for a living. Apparently, there was even more I had to learn about this newspaper gig than I'd realized. Why, for instance, was I wearing slacks and a tie when the fashion expectations were much more, shall we say, eclectic.
The only constant was that your socks could not match any other part of your outfit, which is harder than it sounds when none of the rest of your outfit matches either. There were jeans with black shoes and white socks. There were cut-off shorts with white shoes and black socks. Lots of T-shirts and dirty hats, similar in that they all appeared to have been acquired for free. And the obesity, oh the obesity.
It was like that scene in "Kingpin" when Ishmael peruses that room full of bowling tournament participants and whispers, "Wow, it's kind of intimidating to be in the presence of so many great athletes." The hair was greasy. The glasses were thick. The parts were multi-directional. The guts were ample. All I could figure is that these people must be awesome writers, and I was sure I didn't want any part of them in Dungeons and Dragons, either.
Sufficienty intimidated, I sat down and tried to write a 1o-inch story from some bare-bones information supplied by Bob. Two days later, I had the job.
How did I end up in such a prestigious profession, you might ask? It all started with my mom cutting out a classified ad for a "part-time sports writer" at the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times-News. It sounds like she was being nice, but the truth is it was just another way for her to illustrate how lazy she thought I was. Boy, those six months after I graduated from college and moved back home were good times, good times. But I digress.
I really did need another job. I was working in a local hospital's materials management office, and there were absolutely no remotely cute girls in that complex left for me to flirt with. Besides, how hard could writing for a paper be? I liked sports, and people used to laugh all the time at the stories I wrote in high school English classes. You can't teach that, I figured.
Still, to cover all the bases left open by my complete lack of professional or educational training, I went to the library and checked out not one but two books on journalism. "Who, what, why, where, when and how." Well, I'll be damned. That's good to know.
Sports editor Bob Dalton called me in for an interview/writing test shortly thereafter, and when I walked into the room holding the other candidates I was immediately impressed - by the weirdness of people who write for a living. Apparently, there was even more I had to learn about this newspaper gig than I'd realized. Why, for instance, was I wearing slacks and a tie when the fashion expectations were much more, shall we say, eclectic.
The only constant was that your socks could not match any other part of your outfit, which is harder than it sounds when none of the rest of your outfit matches either. There were jeans with black shoes and white socks. There were cut-off shorts with white shoes and black socks. Lots of T-shirts and dirty hats, similar in that they all appeared to have been acquired for free. And the obesity, oh the obesity.
It was like that scene in "Kingpin" when Ishmael peruses that room full of bowling tournament participants and whispers, "Wow, it's kind of intimidating to be in the presence of so many great athletes." The hair was greasy. The glasses were thick. The parts were multi-directional. The guts were ample. All I could figure is that these people must be awesome writers, and I was sure I didn't want any part of them in Dungeons and Dragons, either.
Sufficienty intimidated, I sat down and tried to write a 1o-inch story from some bare-bones information supplied by Bob. Two days later, I had the job.
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