All-area team bitching, what say you?

Agree with this. It's not like they are asking the athletes to come to a charity function. The paper is looking to make money off it, why can't the athlete.

 

Wow, before I looked to see, I thought for sure that Fredrick must have posted that .

 

Had a parent call me in the office one time and threaten to whip my ass because his kid didn't make an all-area boys volleyball team. I knew who the dude was and he was as a big, always angry man. Basically, the final spot on the team came down to his kid and another kid at the same school. The kid's coach told me I was crazy if I didn't pick the other kid. So I did. I didn't want to throw the coach under the bus. I talked back to him a little - basically inviting him to come down to the office if he had a problem with me or the team. I felt pretty brave saying that over the phone. What I didn't know was the crazy dude was calling from the front desk downstairs and our wonderful security guard let him come upstairs. I was more than a little surprised when the psycho almost knocked our door down coming into the office. My first instinct was to squeal like a little girl and run out the side door. Fortunately, I fought off that instinct. Even more fortunately, our office was crowded that day and he had to get through too many people before getting to me. They were able to talk him down until our wonderful security guard got there to escort him out. Strangely, I never saw or talked to the man again. But his kid did apologize to me, five or six years later, while we sat near each other at a local bar.

 

The Coloradoan, cough Gannett, has done this the past few years for northern Colorado. So not even Denver or all of Colorado, just a small chunk of the state that doesn't even have an overall huge amount of prep success. Peyton Manning and Von Miller were the keynotes the past two years. I know the guy that runs the law enforcement at the venue and he told me what the price tag was on these guys and it's astronomical and quite a bit more than mentioned earlier in this thread. I don't know how Gannett funds it, sponsors are surely a good guess, but it must make a pretty penny for them to do this in such a limited area. Especially since the media business fails in so many other ways. The Coloradoan could pay at least three reporters for a year for what Manning or Miller are paid to talk once (and I know Gannett isn't getting sponsors to pay for reporters!). Obviously it's not hard to tell it's all for show, but people must fall for it some how. Not that it isn't cool for high school kids to get to rub elbows with these guys, just interesting the cost.

 

We honor the players of the year and the coaches of the year at the June banquet and then name the overall male/female athletes of the year. Advertising always comes to me wanting to nail down the speaker for basically nothing (we're not Gannett). I'm cool with the banquet and even serving as the emcee, But it's embarrassing to ask people to come for what we are willing to pay. The players and the parents love the banquet, and the kids dress up like it really is a big deal. We probably make a little bit each year, but not much. More public relations than anything else.

 

Closest we came to that one year was we omitted one player from a story about the all-league football team. One of the other editors had tipped me off dad was coming down to talk about it. Other reporter in the department told me to coach called to ask about it, and we immediately made the fix online and said we'd run a correction in the next day's paper. Coach was cool about it and also alerted us about the parental unit, who apparently wanted coach there with him.

So the parent arrives, wants to see me and the first thing he asks is if we can talk in private. He's a larger fellow and I can tell he's pissed, so my first thought is "is he carrying anything?" So I tell him we can talk in the lobby. There's not only the reception area desk between me and him, but if he is carrying, I've got lots of witnesses! So he spends 10-15 minutes (or was it hours?) demanding we rerun the whole story with his kid in it, which we just didn't do. I explained the fix was already online and there'd be a correction next day. This was not good enough. So we went about 10 rounds on this until the promotions manager came up to rescue me. Her office was about 20 feet away from the reception area and she heard him in there. So she went another 10-15 minutes with him down the same wormhole, even explaining how she was a coach's kid and had also played D1 softball. Finally, he left.

Next year, when we got the all-league team, I told the reporter to print out the list and scratch every kid off it as he typed it, just to be safe.

 

Banquets? Another story, if you please ... one year the retired baseball coach at the local juco had gotten Jerry Tarkanian to speak at a fundraiser for a local school.
Tark was at Fresno State then and we were about an hour away, so it was a good draw. Even got a couple of one-on-one questions in while he was going out to his car.

Get back to the office, and everyone on news and sports desks and the photog shooting the event wished me luck. Turns out Tark had spoken a couple of months earlier at one of those all-day business seminars in town (which news side covered) and gave THE EXACT SAME SPEECH he just gave to the school group. Didn't look up the clip of the other story until after I wrote mine, but what a deflating moment.

 

I'm ashamed to admit we started with one of these about 14 years ago. Now, we do three a year, and I fully expect that to morph into more. It's sickening as shit to watch newspapers whore themselves out just to make a buck.

 

A local radio station did a Dream Team banquet where I grew up. They did separate banquets for football and basketball. It was an event, but also it no doubt was put on to make money for the station.

I don’t have a problem with that at all. What I do have a problem with is piling all the organizational responsibility on the sports department for something that is basically an advertising function.

 

Our local major metro (a Gannett paper) has been putting on a statewide banquet for the past few years. They've gotten a couple of big speakers (Tebow one year, Drew Brees another) and it's become kind of a big event. They honor all of the paper's all-state teams and give it an official feel.
More power to them.
What pisses me off is when our local athletes are honored and they, their parents or their coaches come to me asking for pictures. I want to do something nice for the kids and don't want to be a dick, but it irks me that the paper that is spending thousands of dollars on this huge banquet can't be bothered to take their own damn pictures.
It also irks me that the once a decade we ask the major metro for anything, it's met with a Berlin Wall of resistance. I tried to get a football story from them last year and it came with so many caveats that it was more trouble than it was worth. Yet they expect you to drop everything to help them because they're the big dog. Every other paper in our state has a general unspoken agreement that if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Never had a problem with any of them, even papers we might never be able to return the favor for. For years, however, the major metro has asked for photos and other things and never given a hint of reciprocating. I don't know if that's a Gannett policy or what, but it is insanely annoying.

 

Such an easy fix.

Tell them, "Why yes, we'll be glad to shoot your picture. Our photographer will come by and take your picture and you can pick it up at our business office on Monday for $45."

Then watch them pull out their phones and shoot their own damn picture.

 

Here's the thing, though.
If that paper calls I'll tell them no. What they do is they get the coach or the kid or the parent to call and ask for a picture, which puts me in a difficult position in dealing with people I've covered for years and will have to work with and cover for possibly years to come. I can be a total dick and tell the kids and coaches, "Yeah, that'll be $45," and they'll probably resent it. Next time I need to call them for a favor or hit them up on a sensitive matter maybe they remember it and I get the brush off from them in return.
Or I can just take 30 seconds and email them the mugshot that they asked for and my calls and texts get returned because I've done them a solid that took little to no real effort on my part.
It bothers me that the paper is asking these people to do this when they should take it themselves, but I'm not going to be an asshole to the people in my community who don't understand the dynamics at play and are kind of caught in the middle of it. All those people want is a picture because their kid is being recognized at a statewide banquet. In many cases these same people have sent me results and pictures that helped me immensely in doing my job. The least I can do is give them that.