Yes, I screwed up badly once early on - but I also learned from it very fast.
    When a college student, I got a Bearcat 210 scanner.  It was one of the two earliest scanners you entered channels by calculator-style keypad  I loved that thing.  10 channels - and being programmable kept the costs of adding channels nil.  I had it in the kitchen during the day - and took it upstairs to my bedroom at night.  I soon had all the area police, fire, and EMT channels in it - even the unpublicized police channels not in books of scanner frequencies.
   One day - while in the kitchen with my mother - there was something unusual on the scanner that I’d never heard anything up there with: a wrecked small plane at the tiny local airport.  I took my camera, shot photos, and sold the undeveloped film to the area daily for $30.
   The next day, it ran with credit.  Soon enough, the paper sent me the check - and a print along with negatives.  I just put the envelope with the print and negatives in a shoe box full of photos and negatives.
   I was thrilled with the payment and photo credit.  I therefore didn’t think of any orderly filing system for photos and negatives back in the film era.  And now neither I nor the Greensboro News & Record can find that photo - even though a plane with $250,000 damage to it from a botched taxi test taking it down a steep rocky slope at the end of the runway was a memorable story for the paper.
   Of course, I learned very fast.  Ever since going digital, I save all photos I upload - and all other “keepers” - in well-organized folders and subfolders and back that up off-site.
   Do you?

Another photo of Mitt Romney’s son Tagg campaigning for him ran atop three stories the day after - but I archived all photos of that campaign event, including this one that didn’t run.  Burlington, N.C., Oct. 17, 2012.