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A little article written mentioning Mr. McKenna at washingtoncitypaper.com. He apparently used to be a free-lance sports reporter. Maybe he should have stuck with that.-------------------------------------------------------------Working as a freelance writer for the Washington Post is a tough gig. Your life is nothing but deadline stress. You never know when your pieces will run. Your pay is bad—the average music review pays $100—and the play is worse—try Page C7. And don’t even think of complaining to the Newspaper Guild—you’re as expendable as they come.
In 2000, Post horse-racing stringer Dave McKenna—yes, like just about everyone else mentioned in this column, also a City Paper writer—ran afoul of also-unwritten sports-freelancing guidelines. McKenna’s offense: In a City Paper Cheap Seats column, he resurrected a 1981 hit piece on sports-radio personality Ken Beatrice by then-Post reporter Tony Kornheiser.
"All these years later, the story is fascinating, if only for its meanness," McKenna wrote.
It wasn’t the first time McKenna had mentioned a beloved Postie in his column. A month before, he wrote that the late, sainted Post columnist Shirley Povich might have harbored a grudge against legendary turf writer Jack Mann.
After the Beatrice column ran, McKenna was canned from the Post Sports department.
In an item published by the Post about the incident, sports editor George Solomon told media reporter Howard Kurtz that the mentions of both Kornheiser and Povich were "both unfair and unprofessional."
"If you’re going to write for a particular newspaper, even on a part-time basis," Solomon said, "there has to be some sense of letting the people you work for know what you’re doing."
McKenna says he knew where he lay on the Post food chain. "It wasn’t like I was shocked that this happened," he says. He still writes music reviews for the Style pages.
Having read many reviews by stringers and freelancers, I came to the conclusion long ago that these people are desparately trying to be accepted into the journalism world. They have decided that the way to do this is to not review anything positively, thus appearing "cool". Unfortunately for them, their utter lack of talent, cleverness, word command, creativity and thougtfulness was long ago noticed by others, and no amount of "cool" can overcome that.
That said, the Washington Post has long had a shortage of those who can provide thoughtful criticism in the arts and entertainment section. The only positive pieces often seem to be directed at those events or artworks that they obviously, by their writings, do not and are not capable of, understanding. Highbrow indeed.