Newspaper Offers Foosball Challenge For Reporters Trying To Avoid Weather Stories

The "Get Out Of Doing Weather Story" card
at the Indianapolis Star  

With this blog, I write weather stories almost every day and love it.

I also worked at a newspaper in Vermont for years, and I also loved doing weather stories there, at least when the assignment involved actual storminess and extremes.

Sometimes an editor would assign me a story during average weather and I was supposed to pull something spectacular off about humdrum weather.

That wasn't nearly as much fun.

Apparently, though, a lot of reporters don't like doing weather stories, no matter how interesting conditions are out there  Go figure.

At the Indianapolis Star, reporters can get a "Get Out of Doing A Weather Story" card if they win a foosball match in the breakroom, according to media watcher Jim Romenesko. 

Photographer Stephen Mease caught this
image of me covering a subzero cold wave
for the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press in 2012. 

However, some reporters, thank Gawd, enjoy weather stories. So I'm not the only one.

I was heartened by some Facebook comments to the Romenesko piece on reporters' aversion to weather stories.

One person wrote that a weather story sure beats covering a meeting of the Water Commission, and I couldn't agree more.

Try sitting through a day long Act 250 Development Review Board meeting on a planned Walmart in Vermont and you'll know what I mean.

Plus, doing weather stories entails meeting people out in the weather.

Generally, the only people crazy enough to be out in these storms are, well, crazy. So you get some colorful quotes, some colorful story angles, and a very fun article to write.

If I worked at the Indianapolis Star, on most occasions I'd probably deliberately lose at the foosball tournaments. And then I'd go out and interview people about that approaching tornado.