This is a conflict-of-interest confession. I feel really dumb for never seriously thinking about this before. I am the Daily Evergreen cops reporter. Nick Eaton is the Spokesman-Review Cougar sports reporter. When WSU athletes get in trouble with the law, our beats have unfortunate overlap.

Normally this could be avoided with a little bit of thinking ahead. Unfortunately this is not always a luxury provided in the news industry, so after asking Pullman Police Cmdr. Chris Tennant about the arrest of a WSU football player as part of the weekend mayhem I ended up writing the brief when our Sports editor decided late in the day that we did in fact want something on it. In between, I’d mentioned the arrest to Nick and he’d made the calls and written a brief for the Spokesman.

The whole thing made me very squeamish. We made our own calls, wrote our own briefs, worked with separate editors – and still it’s uncomfortable.

Making it into a colorful circle chart scribbled into my budget notebook assuaged my unease. I didn’t even know I had tiny colored pencils in my bag. I made this circle chart first, then realized Nick and I do actually have lives outside our beats. That’s the whole problem.