Showing posts with label Daytona International Speedway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daytona International Speedway. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2011

Shifting gears

In 1990, I was the auto-racing writer in Charleston, S.C., and life was good. I was in Daytona Beach for the summer race; I'd written my lead story on Bill Elliott and my notebook lead on Darrell Waltrip starting his 400th career race, and I thought I'd head outside to get a few extra quotes. I was also freelancing for Winston Cup Scene (later NASCAR Scene), and you never knew what you'd find.

I walked outside and saw a plumb of smoke in turn four, white against a lovely blue sky. I hurried to pit road to see what was the matter — there was a clatter of activity — and there was the No. 17 car (DW's) sitting there with a mashed hood and smoke billowing upward.

 Oh, oh! I could see my lead and notebook going up in smoke.

 I hurried down there, found that Darrell and whoever he wrecked with (Dave Marcis, I think) were fine and got a few quotes.

 I rushed back to the press center and made the Bill Elliott story my feature for Sunday. Naturally, I made the Darrell Waltrip piece my lead story for the next day, and I reworked my notebook so I had a lede (newspaper parlance for the lead of a story) note to replace DW.

 As I recall, there was more to it than a wreck. I don't think they used radios in practice back then, and this wreck may have produced a rule that forced Cup teams to use radios during practice. Perhaps that came out while we were writing; maybe it came later. I don't remember.

 I didn't rush, but within an hour and a half after I saw the smoke, the stories were done. I'd used my copy-editing skills to craft what I'd already written into something almost totally different.

 The guys at the News and Courier (it became the Post and Courier a few years later) probably had no idea what I went through, and they wouldn't have cared.

 It was the first time I'd had to deal with something like that, and I found it exhilarating. I was dealing with "breaking news" of the sports kind, and I didn't mind the extra work at all.

 It was a good weekend all around. Elliott and Waltrip both raced on Saturday, I filed my stories for Sunday, then stopped somewhere in northern Florida and watched "The Jetsons" movie. Then I ate somewhere and headed home.

 I expected the extra work to be a pain in the butt. Instead, it was fun.

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ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Go for best, not easy...

Copy editors have all sorts of things to remember. When I worked for newspapers years before the Internet existed, I had to remember what acronyms meant, such as AFL-CIO, UL. I even knew that The Bee Gees stood for The Brothers Gibb.

When I covered auto racing, I had to remember that Daytona International was a speedway, but Darlington was a raceway, and Charlotte was a motor speedway. It was the same way when I worked news side — I had to remember when I was talking about a railway, not a railroad.

Then there are the products that need to be uppercased, like Muzak, Frisbee, Xerox and Styrofoam. They're all products made by specific companies. The word Xerox has become part of the lexicon, and you might say that you need to xerox a copy of your letter, but you should spell it Xerox.

I even had to remember that not all champagnes are champagnes. Some very good bubbly wines are from places other than the Champagne region of France.

The trick then was to know where to look for information. When I worked in the sports department of a newspaper, people would call, asking this or that. One guy wanted to know when the NHL started play. I guessed around 1918 because of World War; it was the 1917-18 season, and I think we found it in a media guide.

Another guy asked what Rocky Bleier's first name was, but no one could find it in a Pittsburgh Steelers media guide. I looked in a Notre Dame football book — Rocky Bleier played for the Fighting Irish — and found Bob Bleier among the alumni of the late 1960s.

Yet another guy asked a question, and I told him I had no idea. He said: "Can't you just look in your computer?" "No," I said. "This isn't the Starship Enterprise computer, with all of the information from the known universe." He laughed and hung up.

Little did I know that we'd have something like the Enterprise computer just three or four years later, and it's gotten easier to find information with the Internet. I constantly use Google to make sure that a product is correctly spelled, with the correct case. It can also be a curse, if you happen to Google the wrong web site, with incorrect information.

So, copy editor, beware. Don't take the easiest answer for an answer. It may not be easy, but find the best source of information.
Entries from The Dog Blog
Blog entries from The Auto Racing Journal
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie

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