Cliché-ridden copy will not get you ahead

I grew up wanting to broadcast football and basketball games. I used to hide my tiny transistor radio under the covers, defying my parents' orders to go to sleep. I idolized sports announcers calling games from Madison Square Garden.

Osmosis led me to broadcasting games on my college radio station. Earlier, I wrote sports stories for my high school newspaper. Dreadful stories. We had no faculty mentor to steer us away from stale, cliché-ridden dross.

In one story about a basketball star, I thought I had cleverly used a phrase I stole from a Philadelphia newspaper, noting that a player "stirred the meshes" for 32 points.

Ugh.

Only later, in college and journalism school, did I benefit from teachers who demanded clarity and freshness.

Still interested in covering sports, I snagged a job interview at NBC News, where the boss said: "NBC might hire you some day. You seem to have average intelligence. But we won't consider you until you work five years at a newspaper. A newspaper has the resources to train you; we don't. So, call me in a few years, and we'll talk."

That's how I landed at the Minneapolis Star, placed on general assignment for three months for seasoning before joining the sports department. After three months, the executive editor came to me said, "You're not ready. Three more months."

Describing a game in Roseville, I noted "a swath of tow-headed Ramsey moppets" in the stands, cheering for their team. The sports editor cut that out, snarling, "We don't need that crap in a game story."

Still, whenever he wasn't looking, I snuck some color in.

Weeks later, the paper's executive editor, back from vacation, told me he'd been catching up on back issues and he loved the freshness of my football stories.

Writers need that kind of loving care.

Oh, I never did join the sports department. Straight news had me hooked.