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Notes -
The How Not to Write a Novel example is referring to the use of "said" in speech tags for directly quoted dialogue, not when summarising a series of interactions in narration. There's a separate passage in the book in which they specifically encourage writers to summarise incidental dialogue much like your second example, rather than quoting it directly. The example they gave is something to the effect of:
as opposed to
Personally, I can't recall ever reading a book which I thought was too boring and monotonous specifically because the writer failed to use enough synonyms for "said". Maybe you're talking primarily about journalism, but I think if I read a novel which featured the speech tag Joe expanded, I would probably roll my eyes. It strikes me as part of a register which is inappropriate for most fiction.
I agree, but the example was about journalism, to be clear, where the tags are a useful way of structuring a story for additional clarity. With directly quoted dialogue I think it’s a matter of writer’s preference / style, there are certainly novels with huge amounts of dialogue, bordering on a script in some cases, that I quite enjoy.
Fair enough. Offhand I can't recall an instance in which I thought a piece of journalism was sapped of interest by overuse of the word "said" but I'll keep an eye out for it in future.
Because I have too much time on my hands, I re-read one of my favourite pieces of journalism: "Shattered Glass" by Buzz Bissinger. Out of 45 speech tags, I count 30 "saids".
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