If you haven’t already, you need to check out our story and multimedia on John Dell’s day as a WSSU football player. It is great stuff. A highly enjoyable story told well. As I’ve noted before, John is a first-class reporter who is equally at home writing player profiles and exposes of financial irregularities. And if there’s anybody on our staff who could pull off an afternoon running sprints with young men half his age, it is John.
Here’s the link. Enjoy.
As John wrote, there’s a long and distinguished list of journalists putting on somebody else’s pants for a day/week/season to write about the experience. George Plimpton made a career out of it, most notably with Paper Lion. And that thread continues with the Dirty Jobs show on Discovery. Successful versions of this genre do several things well: First, find the right job. Second, make appropriate fun of your limitations. Third, respect the people whose jobs these are when the camera/notebook is turned away. Fourth: Find the larger story. Fifth, let the story tell itself. Trying too hard creates disaster or treacle.
Update: John’s account of his life with the Rams is the subject of a very interesting message board on SportsJournalist.com. Click here to read.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Also worth reading is A Few Seconds of Panic, journalist Stefan Fatsis’ recently-published account of trying to become an NFL placekicker.
Yes, I am a dork who could build a second home out of those peculiar smiling cardboard boxes I get from Amazon.com.
I started that, but it seemed forced. I
liked Word Freak better.
Word Freak was stellar, although the depictions of the hardcore Scrabble champs and the ease with which they conjured eight syllable words made me feel increasingly stupid with each turned page. Especially since I frequently struggle to figure out the word puzzles on the back of the Count Chocula box.
put on a uniform. blue. report to lewisville-clemmons road. you and other cops are given bullets to stop a person fleeing from a traffic stop.
just how many bullets will it take to stop this person, not yet charged with anything? he’s an african-american subject.
will it take one bullet to shoot out a tire? Will you use the razor track to pop out his tires? it’s a stolen car, stolen on halloween.
will you use two bullets? one to warn him, another to shoot high and aim low?
will you fire three bullets into the windshield? you’re in front of a church and its child care center, remember.
the subject who was killed out there that day is getting help from the darryl hunt project. some think there is no help needed and there was no excessive force used. check out the bruce springsteen song and its lyrics “American Skin.”
“If an officer stops you, promise you’ll always be polite, that you’ll never ever run away, promise Mama you’ll keep you hands in sight.”
Jovan Antwan Evans.
Desk duty for you since you fired your gun. A 1,000-year SBI investigation will protect you.
Laugh about it. Shout about it. Another bad guy bites the dust. Meanwhile a widow weeps. Nobody cares.
Twenty-seven years old, shot dead in February. It was chilly out there the day the black bird whirlied down in a field from its route in Salisbury to the crime scene.
How many shots would it take you to bring a man down?
It took 10 shots, the sheriff told me, from the SBI report.
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