Dear dimwit on the phone

The readers like to see more and more on the front, even when it's not warranted.
I remember several years ago when I covered an area high school football team's home game. They lost. Story appeared on an odd-numbered inside page, down the right side, without a photo.
Guy (not the coach) left a message a few days later, complaining about several things, one of which was that the story wasn't on the front of the sports section.
It was early in the season, so we had MLB games to get on there, as well as the stories and pics from the two in-town high school football teams who played that night. But this guy thought his team — area school located about 10 miles away — should have been on the front instead of one of the in-town teams.
Of course, he didn't leave his name or number.
My editor listened to the message, then said the guy's an idiot and we moved on.

 

This past week we received not one but two calls complaining about games not being on TV because the previous game is running long. One lady was pissed off that our listing was obviously wrong and demanded to know the correct channel. The other call was an old guy who blamed us for the first game still playing.

 

Loved getting those calls during baseball season when a game would be in a rain delay and we'd get the hate calls because we said the game would be on and it's an Andy Griffith Show rerun instead. Sometimes they'd insist it was still our fault because the game wasn't on, even after explaining it was a rain delay.

 

There was a lady who was upset tennis wasn't on TV when we said it would be. Now it had actually been rained out, which is what I thought she was blaming us for, but she wasn't even on the right channel! Yet that was still our fault.

 

"Yes, my name is [SERIAL CALLER] at [NUMBER YOU SEE APPEAR ON CALLER ID 300 TIMES A YEAR]. I'd like to know where the [UNIVERSITY IN A DIFFERENT STATE] freshman quarterback [NO IN-STATE TIES] went to high school. What city, what state and the high school. My number is [NUMBER YOU SEE APPEAR ON CALLER ID 300 TIMES A YEAR]. Thank you very much. I hope to hear a live voice instead of your perennial recording, you know? Uh, you know. Okay, uh, hope to hear from you. Thank you very much. Bye."

 

I take it Serial is an older person who doesn't know how to Google someone?

 

Yeah, he's an older guy who probably doesn't have the internet. I guess our phone number is his Google.

For a big baseball fan, he needs to call us 162 times a year for the final score, although he seems to call right when the game ends -- so is he actually watching and then calling to ask questions he already knows the answers to? One time I gave him the wrong team winning for a college football or basketball game because I misheard him say or not say State and told him the result of a different game, and he called right back up a few minutes later to ask who won again, so it seemed like he already knew the answer.

But then there are other times where he's completely off the mark, like asking who won the game between two teams that aren't even playing each other, or asking who won the Preakness when he was calling about the Belmont Stakes. Or he'll ask who won the Broncos and Ravens games and I'll tell him the Broncos and Dolphins won, then he asks who the Dolphins played, and I have to tell him they played the Ravens.

 

Dear Higher Ups,
Thanks for canceling the paper's subscription to our photo wire service two months ago, and then not telling the sports guy -- the one who uses it the most -- that it expires at midnight on Jan. 1, just in time for a holiday weekend full of stuff I planned on using it for, and then for not having an alternative in place other than, "Use more local photos."

 

Run a 10” local story with a six-column photo and a five-column photo.
That should garishly fill 2/3 of a page and drive your point home.

 

The thing is, we don't use wire photos all that much and when we do it's typically to help fill an inside page or as a secondary photo on the front. I can count on one hand, probably, the number of times in the past year when a wire photo was our main art on the cover and most of those were in-state college games. Maybe that's why they figured they could dump it without it being an issue.
What pisses me off, though, is those few times a year when we're going to look like morons because of it. Like, say, in about a month when the NFL has that "Super Bowl" thing. Or next week with the college championship game. I suppose I could go all passive-aggressive and run the Super Bowl story down the rail with a mug.
Also annoying is that, thanks to not having any notice, I wasn't able to spend an hour downloading some file photos for future use before the subscription ran out.

 

You just know some higher-up is going to complain the day after that Super Bowl thingy that you didn't run any photos.

 

If it's a big story and you don't have access to wire photos, strip it across the top of the sports front with a big, bold headline. Add a pullquote and team logos and whatever else you can use. That's about all you can do, and at least it gets a good ride above your local centerpiece.