Breakfast reading

This time of year in NC, the freshest, ripest strawberries you will ever eat are piled high at our local produce vendor.  I grew up with the AJC Sports section and a bowl of cereal every morning.  These wonderful berries only add to the allure of those moments of teen fantasies.  This morning there was an article on the AJC website (the pine tree version is not delivered in NC) that I found amusing.  The headline indicated there were "new" details about Bobby Parks' recruitment at Tech.  Reading down the screen in search of new details I discovered Brian Gregory has sent Parks email messages that Parks has basically ignored.

So, I asked myself, what prompted the AJC to publish this "nothing" piece?  My answer to myself was that an editor came by Michael Carvell's desk and said something like, "We need something from you today.  Whatcha got?"  Carvell's reply, to himself, was, "Nothing!"  What he said to the editor was, "I have some new stuff on the Parks fiasco at Tech."  The editor (probably a uga grad), said, "Go with it for about 4-5 graphs."  Carvell was off the hook because he could restate what he already wrote for three graphs, add a line about the emails he left out of the previous post, and he was essentially done. 

This is how a newspaper works most of the the time.  That is also what Seth Davis was doing at Sports Illustrated last week when his Brian Gregory is Under The Gun comment entered the wifi world.  The guys over at Sting Talk spent several days back & forth with this thread, but none really brought out how writers are under so much pressure to write something witty and urbane and have it ready on a fixed schedule.  None are allowed to say to the boss, "I really don't have anything to write about this week."  The employment office waiting room will be their next office.

To some degree, that happens with a blog like FTRS, but several of us share the load and no one feels pressured to spill out bs to waste your time and hits on the site.

In case you have not read the Davis piece, here it is.