Dear dimwit on the phone

Most nights, there's only one or two non-sports folks in the office after 7, and they really don't care about whatever we have on TV.

 

I worked with a woman like that. We were a male, sports fan dominated office and she wanted to be one of the boys. We tolerated it until she called runs in a baseball game "points "

 

Ma'am,
You are correct that the not researching of facts does make one question the integrity of a reporter's journalistic skills. However, emailing the wrong paper makes one question the quality of your reading comprehension skills.

 

High school playoff game between local and out-of-area team, father of out-of-area team player writes to complain that our reporter got something wrong involving his kid, which is fine, but then he adds that his kid was upset about not getting proper credit. However, the way he emphasized that part made me think his kid never even read the story.

 

Most of the folks on our copy desk do this all the time, even though they've got a TV in their area of the newsroom.

It's especially bad if the Bengals, Reds, Cubs or anything Indiana Hoosiers related is on TV. Our copy desk chief is a Cubs fan, so she was back in our area almost every night until the Cubs got knocked out, and that almost always meant she was watching our TV while they were right up on deadline.

 

Guy called at 11:30 last Friday night to complain that one of the local TV stations didn't have video of Podunk High's playoff win over Faraway High.

Explained that, as the Daily Planet NEWSPAPER, this is a complaint that should be directed elsewhere. Complaint then becomes, "There's also never anything about Podunk in the Daily Planet. Doesn't Will Graham run the sports there?"

Told the guy that's precisely who he was talking to at the moment.

"You used to be at the paper in Podunk. We didn't like you there, either."

Have a nice day, sir.

 

Dear Complaining Podunk Supporter,
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you didn't see the note we had in today's paper. Because, if you had read the stories, then there's no way you could have missed the note we included in today's sports section that said all signing photos from Wednesday's coverage of National Signing Day would run in Friday's section.

But please keep believing we favor one school over another.

 

Costing scholarships right up through signing day.
Now THAT takes commitment.

 

Do we work together?! LOUD is the key for our two offenders. One works a dayshift usually and stops by to watch the start of a 7 p.m. start and the other is late news guy that, instead of offering help to check proofs yells (YELLS!) at the TV and roots for his fantasy team.

 

You need to tell the second guy that a wise man once said, "Nobody gives a fuck about your fantasy team."

 

Anyone have more than one serial score caller? We have a couple older guys who call all the time for scores, one in particular can't be that much of a baseball fan if he needs the score and details of all 162 games for the home team. It's gotten to the point where if I see their phone numbers, I could just pick up the phone and immediately give the score before they say a word (on a side note, someone on news side has a repeat nut job caller and her response is to not answer and instructs everyone else not to pick up either). More recently during college football season, an elderly man started calling every Saturday asking for multiple scores, but they're almost never the same team twice so I have no idea what he needs them for.

 

The ones that always get me are the ones who want details on the game, even though on most nights, all we want to know is 1) What's the score? 2) How far along is it?, and 3) is the f'ing thing going to be over by deadline?