Mailbag: Burn, baby, burn...

Grape,
I just got back from the beach this weekend, and looking like a lobster from all the sunburn I got on my face and neck. What happens if that happens or, say, I get hit in the eye with a foul baseball, while I'm an on-air reporter? Or is that just one more reason to wear sun block and sit in the upper decks?

-Red Lobster

Dear Lobster,

Well, one should always wear sunblock. As someone who is so fair skinned I once got burned in Sweden, I've been wearing the stuff since it came out. (I may as well be living on the planet Mercury.) The sun is not your friend, and protecting your skin when you're young will extend your career. High def is unforgiving, and in ten years they'll have super duper high def which will no doubt reveal wrinkles down to the molecular level.

I've seen a few people I used to work with who were sun worshipers and their faces looked like my old baseball glove.

You know what else ages your skin as much as the sun? Smoking.

As for baseball, I've attended hundreds of Mets games and called two years of minor league play by play, and never came close to catching a foul. Worth the risk.


Dear Grapevine,

I've noticed you've had a few clients who made some really big market jumps. What's the common denominator?

-Jealous


Dear Jealous,

Well, they've all been very talented. All could write very well. But I think the biggest thing was that they were all open to suggestion and willing to learn. Too many young people think they know everything coming out of college and look at veterans as people whose time has passed. We're old, but we know lots of stuff. And we can tell you how to avoid the mistakes we made. Sometimes one piece of advice can save you years of headaches.

Be the sponge. Soak up every piece of advice you can. Not all of it will be good advice, but you'll learn as you go along.

Finally, none were afraid to send their tapes to top markets. When one young lady moves from Gainesville, Florida to Detroit (151 market jump), and another goes from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver (86 markets) that should tell you anything is possible.

Neither had an agent, by the way.


Grapeman,

How does an agent actually get a commission? Does it come right out of your paycheck?

-Curious


Dear Curious,

Well, in the case of my agent, I just sent her a check.

The one thing you have to keep in mind is that the agent's commission is based on your gross salary, not your take home pay. Just to make things easy, let's say your agent gets six percent and you make $100k. You owe the agent six thousand dollars, not six percent of your net paycheck. That little fact is a surprise to some people.

Grapevine,

Why so many women in the business? We hardly have any guys in the newsroom, and none ever seem to apply.

Kate


Dear Kate,

Funny, when I got into the business there weren't any women in the newsroom. When we finally got one other reporters would ask me, "What's that like?" I'd tell them she was fine but we had to tone down the language. (Then we got to know her and realized she could be as foul-mouthed as any of us.)

I have this theory that things changed when the show Murphy Brown got real popular. All of a sudden women seemed to flood the J-Schools.

Will it cycle back? Don't think so. Sports jobs are disappearing and the big salaries are as well.

If nothing else, it cuts down on newsroom romances.


Grape,

What's the most bizarre mistake you ever saw in a newsroom?

J.J.


Dear J.J.,

We killed someone who wasn't dead. We got an obit about a guy who had passed on and it said that he had been the Grand Marshal of some parade. We had video of the parade, so someone pulled a clip with a guy riding in a car with a sign that read "Grand Marshal." Turned out there were two that year, and we chose the wrong one.

The guy who was still alive got flooded with calls and was a good sport about it, saying "I never knew so many people cared."