Taking nothing away from Pylon's coverage (which I haven't seen, but will
in about 3 weeks, because that's how long it takes to get to me), I have
4 comments in response to the previous comments on the Sports Car
coverage of Nationals.
1) Paid writerS? Do you mean that I covered CSP & CSPL as my work
assignment? I think the choice of words was unfortunate, because most
people probably read that as money changed hands, when it didn't. For
the record, I also worked Timing & Scoring one heat, and would have been
happy to do more.
2) Maybe some people skimmed results and wrote from there. That is
certainly not how I approached CSP and CSPL, and I think it is grossly
unfair to say that's how we all handled the writing task.
3) The word limits are unfortunate. I started with what I thought was a
good report at 1500 words. It did get chopped pretty drastically, which
I was expecting. But be honest, how many of the class articles have you
read word for word? The ones where you knew who the competitors were?
The ones where you knew the writers? All of us didn't read every
article, and we're autocrossers. Everyone who gets Sports Car isn't
interested in autox. Everyone who gets Pylon is.
4) I think I finally have a tiny little taste of what it must be like to
be on the SEB or SCAC etc. I worked hard in trying to get quotes and an
understanding of the class (getting my head snapped off by a couple of
CSP guys and ignored by others who would rather be grouchy than
nervous), I waited in the rain, I sat in impound for a quite a while
finding out what the outcome of the protest would be (they refused to
hear it which is why I didn't waste words on it in the story), and I
thought I had a) provided a service and b) wrote a fair and accurate
commentary. Now I feel like it just got thrown back in my face--accused
of slacking AND of personally benefiting. Thanks. No wonder Rocky had
to ask for volunteer writers on multiple occasions.
mlc
'91 MR2 NA
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