I set out to become a journalist back when I was but a wee lad because I wanted to become a sportswriter.
Yes, a sportswriter: I love sports, but have no athletic talent. (If it were possible to have negative athletic talent, I would; ask my former city-league softball teammates. They'll tell ya.) But I could write.
I ended up taking my goal to become a sportswriter to a very, very expensive college. However, there was a problem with this plan: I was working a lot of hours so I could afford to go to this very, very expensive college, and that meant that I didn't have time to cover a sports beat for the college newspaper. (Covering a beat means going to lots of games and matches, both at home and on the road, etc.) But I did have time to cover spot news, and, later, to work on longer features and investigative pieces.
That's what I had experience doing in college, so that's what I wound up doing professionally after college.
I was a reliable worker, a decent writer and a good reporter. Somewhere along the line, a publisher noticed this, and decided to make me an editor. Being an editor meant less writing and reporting, but, hey: I was paid a few extra bucks per week!
Sweet! That meant I could actually make my student-loan payments without working a second job selling water heaters at Sears!
Today, I've been an editor for quite a while. But editing is only part of the job of being an editor; we also have to deal with things like budgets and public appearances and angry people. And you'd be surprised how many of those angry people are mad about event listings.
I bring this all up, because on my to-do list is a phone call I need to make to someone who was angry because we simply called him to ask a question about a listings request. And that got me pondering how someone who sets out to become a sportswriter winds up making a living, in part, by dealing with pricks who are angry about calendar listings.
Well, that's how.
