A Deadline Column About Writing on Deadline
Dave Kindred |
Jan. 28, 2010 8:01 a.m.
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I thought of this because I bought a card the other day that had a drawing of a computer monitor above the words, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
I don’t know who said that, but it was not a daily newspaper hack.
We hackers – no matter my disguise today, I am and always will be a daily newspaper hack – can not afford to miss a deadline. Deadlines exist for good reason, sometimes ignored by artistes who believe they are a construct of wicked editors out to sabotage their art for the cackling good fun of it. Well, on deadline, I don’t want artists, I want mechanics. Get the thing done.
To miss a deadline is to make a page late. Then the presses start late, the trucks can’t get on the road without the papers, carriers stand around in the dark cursing because they can’t deliver the paper before everybody leaves for work, and, next thing you know, the industry is dead, finished, kaput, -30-, and will the last guy to leave the press box please turn out the lights?
OK, yes, of course, I exaggerate. I do it to make the point that it’s a better paper with your stuff in it than without. And anytime we can make today’s paper better than yesterday’s is a good day.
A hundred years ago, the New York Post columnist Milton Gross gave me the best piece of deadline-writing advice ever.
"Always be ready to write," he said. We were at a heavyweight championship fight. "Be thinking, if this ends on the next punch, ‘What can I write?’"
That question works for everything. I have worked with one of newspapering’s best sportswriters, a brilliant, gifted guy. But it often was hours after the event before he could write. He tape-recorded everything. He made notes that filled pages. Then he transcribed the tapes and re-read the notes. He made the writing an act of masochism. He typed in five possible adjectives for every noun and then went back later to delete the four he didn’t need. If he ever filed on deadline, it was not in my presence.
He was never ready to write.
To be ready, edit every minute. Don’t wait for it to be over. Think of the event as a kaleidoscope, the story changing with each turn.
Mark your notes as their importance. Things that must be in the story, make them distinctive – by using a colored pencil, or by asterisks, circles, whatever works to remind you, under the gun, the vise of time closing on your privates, THIS MUST BE USED. Furman Bisher, the Atlanta legend, writes notes in complete sentences that later show up in his column, somehow fitting perfectly into his theme. The rest of us lesser hacks are forced to translate from our scribblings. I’ve tried Bisher’s method, and can not make it work because I want each word and each sentence to grow out of the previous – and anything written out of context seems jarring.
(Speaking of jarring, my darling wife just showed up. "Whatcha writing?" she said. I said, in my kindest on-deadline way, "Go AWAY.")
Make cacophony your friend. You can not avoid the noise of an arena or the yakking of press box wits. Make it the music you never hear. Stephen King, in his book "On Writing," (oh God, now I gotta look it up, deadline flying toward me – 10:21 now), says he writes "to loud music – hard-rock stuff like AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, and Metallica . . . It surrounds me, keeps the mundane world out. When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds."
Do not go to the hospitality room at halftime. Figure out what your world is, not what someone else thinks it should be. Take the time to review your notes, get them in order; the more preparation you do during the event, the less you need to do later.
Then comes the fun part, the writing. My friend Bud Shaw of the Cleveland Plain Dealer says he does deadline columns in short, punchy sentences to achieve a "rhythm that makes me write quicker." It’s no time to get complex, not time to get artistic. It’s time to walk out there onto a high wire in the wind and see if you can you get to the other side.
It’s a test, it’s a dare, it’s a game within the game.
It’s an adrenaline junkie’s fix.
Done, you can smile.
It’s 10:29 a.m.
It’s 802 words.
Close enough.
Dave Kindred’s next book will be "Morning Miracle," an inside-the-newsroom account of two years in the life of The Washington Post. Now a contributing writer at Golf Digest, Kindred is a Red Smith Award winner and member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. He can be reached at inkstained1@aol.com. He can be followed at Twitter.com/DaveKindred and facebook.com/people/Dave-Kindred/509353295
Cut it out, you’re giving me deadline flashbacks. All I can think about is how often I wrote poorly when I was forced to sprint. My chief consolation came from Vic Ziegel, who struggled mightily with deadlines himself: “If you miss once, nothing happens. If you miss too often, they make you sports editor.” And in Vic’s case they really did, at the New York Daily News. You could look it up.
The deadline quote is usually attributed to the late Douglas Adams.
Didn’t have time to look it up! Maybe catch it for the city…
Great story on deadline writing. The first and only Super Bowl I covered was in Houston and the Carolina Panthers against New England. When I tell people I’ve covered the Super Bowl they are fascinated. Then I tell them when the game was over I had to write three stories in 50 minutes to beat deadline. Yeah, that was great fun!
Dave,
As always, great stuff. I don’t know about you – or others, for that matter – but I usually have a feeling of satisfaction or accomplishment after writing a story under strict deadline pressure.
With presses being used to print everything under the sun and with some newspapers – such as the one where I work – guaranteeing home delivery as early as 5 a.m., deadlines are getting earlier all the time.
That being said, there’s nothing like covering a professional baseball game that ends at 10 p.m. and filing a 15-20-inch story before the 10:45 p.m. deadline.
At 11:30 p.m., you’re in bed watching highlights of the game on TV, knowing that in the past 90 minutes: the game ended at 10 p.m.; you waited for the 10-minute “cooling off period” before conducting interviews; wrote the story before the 10:45 p.m. deadline; and made the 30-minute drive back to your house in time to watch the highlights on TV.
Thanks again for all the great insights, ideas, suggestions, etc. you provide. I’ve been in this business for more than 25 years – but there’s always something you can learn to help make you a better writer and journalist.
Great stuff Dave and so true. Amazing what you can do when pressed by time or the situation. I wrote an 800 word piece on a racehorse while sitting at my son’s indoor track meet (starter’s pistols are difficult to ignore…) two weeks ago. Wouldn’t have been able to do it in a quiet room at a desk.
My all-time reporting-on-deadline story: I dictated blow-by-blow from the second Holmes-Spinks heavyweight championship fight. I called each round and had Holmes an easy winner. At fight’s end, I dictated a lede, something like, “Larry Holmes easily regained the heavyweight championshp with a dominating performance over . . .” Then waited for the decision to be announced. Barely had the ring announcer’s words been heard before I was saying into the phone, something like, “Michael Spinks tonight retained the heavyweight championship in a controversial decision that left ringside observers stunned . . .”
Toughest deadline write ever – Tyson vs. Michael Spinks. The fight started right at 11 pm eastern time, right on deadline, and my paper decided to hold first edition for the fight. My seat was in the third row, right behind Spinks’ corner, right behind a a giant HBO cameraman who blocked my view of most of the 91 seconds of the fight. My colleague beside me, the late Rick Fraser, did play for play for me so I could at hear what was going on. The fight ended swiftly: And within 15 minutes, for a held newspaper, I had written almost 700 words on something I’d barely seen. To this day, I figure if I can do that, I can do just about anything.
I’d picked Spinks to win. Said he was too smart and crafty for Tyson. Knew I was wrong as soon as I saw Spinks see Tyson come into the ring. The look reminded me of what Ray Arcel had said of the men he brought in against Joe Louis. “They wilted like tulips,” the great old man said. Spinks wilted when first Tyson breathed on him, went down, I do believe, from a body punch and wanted to stay where it was safe.
I miss heavyweight boxing. Haven’t been to a fight since Lennox Lewis beat Klitschko.
Good stuff Dave. Deadline writing to me has always been a time-management exercise, and it’s becoming moreso, because with Internet copy, we’re all working in a wire service environment. I came to the place where I was convinced you had to have at least 2/3 of it written when the game ended; much easier to pound out 150 words in 10 minutes than it is the entire 450. I’ve looked around and seen a lot of reporters wasting time during games, and then they struggle to make deadline. Do it long enough, and you come to embrace it. At halftime, write a lede. You’ve got a 50/50 chance of it being right, and it’s easier to embellish or change it in a hurry than it is to make it up from scratch.
Worst annual deadline experience for me?
The Saturday of the US Open tennis, when they’d play both men’s semis on either side of the women’s final, and always on the early Saturday-for-Sunday timetable.
I worked alone for the Boston Herald, so I was frantic, although it was always a great diversion to watch the several folks from the NYT and the WaPo — Hi, John! — fighting with each other.
Feinstein-on-deadline story: we’re at Indianapolis, some Final Four, this during The National’s time, we’re both on deadline, I’m reaching for the phone to send, he says, “I need the phone,” I say, “Soon as I’m done,” he says, “I NEED the phone,” I say, Soon as I’m done,” he starts again, “I NEED THE….” and I say, “USE THE F— PHONE, I’LL GO TO MUNCIE AND FIND ANOTHER ONE,” which I almost do, and he calls me the next morning to ask, “What was wrong last night?” and I tell him, “You were being an asshole,” and he says, with some relief, “Oh, is that all?”…. we were, are, and always will be friends, and he has even let me use his phone on deadline once or twice since….
Dave,
You’re still the greatest. Would love to see an encore for “The Dream Game.” A column on John Wall, as in your eyes, would also be a great read, I’m sure. Come see us.
Dave,
You’re still the greatest. Would love to see an encore for “The Dream Game.” A column on John Wall, as in your eyes, would also be a great read. Come see us.
“Toughest deadline write ever – Tyson vs. Michael Spinks. The fight started right at 11 pm eastern time, right on deadline, and my paper decided to hold first edition for the fight…”
I feel for Steve Simmons, but smiled at his anecdote. Tyson-Spinks was just the second (and last) major fight I’d covered and walking to my seat, I knew I couldn’t fake it, write “running” with much authority or just crank from familiarity like I could on a tight deadline with baseball, football or basketball. I was working for a paper in the Central time zone, but I distinctly remember thinking, “If this goes the distance, I’m screwed on deadline.” Then, 31 seconds later, I had a big grin on my face and what felt like all the time in the world. Prepare for the worst and anything short of that is a bonus.
In my print life, I was always one of those geeks who thought that writing two stories on deadline was always better than one. At the famous Boise State-OU Fiesta Bowl, was doing a game story and a column on OU running back Adrian Peterson (playing his last game for the Sooners). Of course, all hell broke loose in the final minutes. I had gone to the field to try and get a quick Peterson quote for the column. Had my laptop in my shoulder bag. When I left the box, OU was down 28-20. When I get to the field, they score on an interception return to take the lead. I take out my laptop, set it on a garbage can near the stands and start rewriting the game story. (Bill Hancock, now the BCS dude, says he’ll never forget the site of me writing on top of a trash can – no smart aleck comments, please). BSU scores to tie it. OT. Stop rewriting. BSU wins on 2 trick plays. Start rewriting. Head to photo area to get online to send. See BSU RB propose to girl friend. Get girl friend’s name from friendly photographer. Grab a Peterson quote from OU press conference. File both stories. Head to BSU locker room and gather some of the greatest quotes ever for an on-line follow package.
Reading the comments to this brilliant column is why I miss this business so much. Reminded me of the strike delayed 1981 All-Star Game in Cleveland when I was so impressed to be sitting next to Tom Boswell in the cramped Municipal Stadium press box. Was not so impressed, though, when Boswell spilled his cup of coffee on my lap as I tried to make sense of how Rollie Fingers had blown the lead for the AL stars. Perhaps it would not have made much of a difference if I hadn’t been covering the Milwaukee Brewers for the Milwaukee Sentinel, but when the Brewers best coughed it up, I was in more of a spot than usual. Fingers later noted in the clubhouse how I must have peed in my pants when he gave up the lead. Too bad most of Fingers’ comments had to wait a day because of those wonderful Sen tinel deadlines.
I enjoyed this … especially the nod to Stephen King’s book. I’ve got a bookcase full of stuff on writing, but his is one of my favorites. Very practical stuff. Keep sprinting …