Dear dimwit on the phone

Seems a little whiny, and preachy, but it's also seemingly coming from a place of wanting to get results in. However, I imagine the response is going to be some sort of, "Why are we doing your job for you? Don't write this preachy column if you're not willing to spend $50 on a freelancer."

 

I'm noticing it in my neck of the woods, too. We've called and emailed coaches and ADs, begging for results, only to be ignored on Friday nights by at least a third of our teams. I don't recall it being like this 10 years ago when I started (although at a different paper).

And with half the staff that my current paper had 10 years ago, the current approach is to treat it like community sports: call it in and we'll run it, but we're not chasing you down anymore.

 

So this is supposed to convince people to call in their games? I don't think I would write that column. Seems to me he's making a lot of excuses himself (not to mention sounding like a whiner). I remember back in my prep days when we had several coaches who were inconsistent in reporting scores. Most of them hung out in the same bar after games. I asked them to bring the information to the bar after the game and I'd call them there. I would call the bar after finishing my game story and get them on the phone one at a time. Wasn't ideal but it worked pretty well.

 

He should have just sent that as an email to every coach and AD in his coverage area. Should never have been printed.

 

Used to work with a guy (RIP) who would finish his game story then see what scores hadn't been called in yet. He would call the field house, the coach's house and, finally, call the Dairy Queen in these small towns. Most times, he would find the information he needed.

 

Way back when in Virginia Marshall Johnson who worked for the state's AP Bureau was known to track down football scores by phoning rescue squad buildings and sheriff's offices. he knew deputies and EMTs would be at the games and that was a good way to find out the scores on Friday nights.

 

That's obscenely clever.

 

That's clever, if all you need to know is the score of the game, but nowadays, I can just get the score from Twitter. If the coaches don't want anything more than that in the paper by not sending us the stats, then that's all they're going to get.

The biggest thing we face at our shop is coaches submitting before deadline. A lot of times, we'll get most of the stat calls/emails, but we'll be lucky to get half of them before our submission deadline.

 

Sure is, but reading that post made my head hurt.

 

Grammatically that sentence was a mess, no doubt.

 

We still put 'em all online. Our Friday night deadline isn't late enough for a full report anyway, so it's the best we can offer. I'm the one who appealed to the ADs, as well as all of the local football coaches. I'll find out tomorrow night how well it worked.

 

Here's a reader response that has me a bit puzzled. Lady calls in late at night with a question about something and then says it would be a good story. I say I can transfer her to the editor's voice mail so she can leave a message. Then she gets really upset like I'm blowing her off. She doesn't say she's upset but she gets really snarky and sarcastic. She might've been the first caller I've ever taken who didn't want the editor. If you wanted to pitch a story idea, wouldn't you want the head cheese? Unless she thought I was personally going to write the story right then and there for tomorrow's paper.