Dear dimwit on the phone

Hey, it was positive for law enforcement.

 

I guess I'm costing future attorneys scholarships. BTW, the featured school wins pretty much every year. It would be like "why do you always write about Alabama when Vanderbilt tries just as hard?"

Hi MTM-

As a reader of the Podunk Press and a follower of the Mock Trial competition, I want to thank you for covering the story. However, I wanted to express my concerns about how you cover this event.

As you know, all of the teams in Podunk County work very hard to compete in this event. Some underserved schools, such as Shelbyville, compete against teams such as Perennial Winner despite having a much smaller amount of attorney coaches. Some schools such as GW Bush (you refer to it simply as "Bush") have had a incredibly successful season, and have risen through the ranks year over year, are are really considered a huge underdog contender.

These other schools tend to get buried in your coverage. The last two articles you produced both had pictures only of members of Perennial Winner's team, and interviews only with Perennial Winner's coaches. I think you are missing the bigger stories that are happening every day. And, quite frankly, you are not covering the more interesting ones, the ones that your readers want to see.

I felt a responsibility to write you to advocate for the children. In their youth, they still believe in the idea that journalism is impartial, and that by working really hard, through great adversities (some of these kids flourish despite horrific circumstances), they have the same opportunity to be recognized as everyone else. At my age, even I believe in the possibility of this idea. I believe that through dialogue we can perhaps convince others to see that stories should be reported fairly, from a completely objective vantage point, free from any bias.

I hope this email has been constructive. My intention is only to give my opinion as to how your articles are perceived by some. Perhaps you will see that there are so many other teams that could be featured in stories.

Thank you,


A Concerned Reader

 

No one ever says, "well we didn't work very hard."

 

Today's dimwit comes via e-mail. The head of the recreation department sent us the list of winners and runners-up from each division of the county spelling bee. He sent photos about two hours later. There were five divisions and he sent five photos, but he sent pics of two of the divisions twice and forgot two other divisions. Also, we don't know who's who in any of the photos.

So I sent him an email back telling him two of the photos were the same and we need to know which kids are in which photos. He sends back one of the missing photos and says he identified the winners in the first email.

I shot him back again. No, see, we need to know which kids are in which photos. Unless he thinks we'll be able to guess which kids are the first graders and which are the second graders.

Fortunately, this stuff will be on a page other than sports, so it will be the managing editor's problem when she comes back tomorrow.

 

At one stop, one of the local service club had some soccer skills competition with about a half dozen winners. The release was sent to the ME, but only one photo was sent along. He sent it to me, since it was one of the days I filled in in sports, so I told the ME we'd run the release only. He was a former sports guy, so knew where I was coming from.

 

And what I forgot to include in a previous post is that some coaches send in images of their scoresheets. It's simply wonderful when I get ones that are not totaled!!!

 

Not a phone call, but ...
Got boys and girls track triangular results emailed in Monday night. There were three attachments — boys meet, with one page for each event, with full names but no score; girls meet, with one page for each event, with full names but no score; and a two-page item covering both meets, that had team scores but no first names.
While it was nice to have something sent in that was typed and not handwritten, we had to print off 34 pages — 17 each for the boys and girls meets — and then have someone read off the team scores just to get a recap written. Results for weekend invitationals don't even require that much work to print or that much paper.

 

Track and field is the worst!

 

As much as we complain about swim parents, doing the state and meer roundup was cake. All the teams in our area used the same timing system, so they'd pdf the result sheets and mail them in. 15 minutes, tops.

 

The weekend meets are actually easier than the weekday duals and triangulars. Many of the invitationals have their results posted on the website baumspage.com and the results can easily printed. Many of the weekday meets have hand-scrawled results, often without first names and sometimes without full results — just placers without times, distances or heights.

 

Agreed. Kids keeping track stats are worse than the most generous baseball/softball scorers.

 

The revenge of sportsjournalists.com, family division.

A few months ago I posted about proofing some papers for my mom's service club, which was awarding scholarships to graduating high school students and juco students transfering to a four-year school in the fall. One of the selectees wrote her back, saying he had decided not to transfer to a four-year school, he did not know it was a requirement and could they hold it for him for a year? Mom shoots back an email showing him where entry rules said it was for a four-year school and he was invited to apply again next year.

His money went to someone else. Kid cost himself a scholarship.