Dear dimwit on the phone

Dear basketball bumpkin.

It sucks your dear brother — who helped with your instructional hoops camp — died last week. I feel for you. I'm still not going to run a free ad for your camp that is purely for profit. Here is the card for our ad rep. If you are going to make money, we want to make money as well.

RIP bro.

 

He was. It's in "Curse of the Bambino."

 

Dear editor:

No, I'm not coming into the office to budget your section instead of meeting with the superintendent to talk about next academic year's budget cuts. That's your job. You're salaried. Deal with it.

 

Amen.
Every time I hear a coach call and say, "We got back late. Sorry," I want to punch them in the stomach. You have a cellphone. Your assistant coach has a cellphone. Every single kid on that bus has a cellphone.
Use them.

 

Exactly. And if they're like coaches around here, they've been reminded of deadline every single time they call, too.

 

I don't know everyone's situation, but isn't it the journalists job to contact the coach? If you want the info early, couldn't you as easily call him?

 

I suppose, but it's a courtesy. We usually tell them ahead of time whether they need to call us or not, especially during football season. The state association faxes out a memo every summer reminding coaches that it's their job to make sure someone calls in scores. And a lot of times, to be honest, it's a parent that calls it in because they're the ones keeping stats or the book. Calling the coach might not get you anything more than the final score.
And when they find time to call their stuff into the major metro and not us, the local rag, it's especially galling.

 

This journalist's job at this moment in time is to:
* Write stories.
* Take photos on occasion when the freelancer isn't available.
* Edit all photos.
* Lay out the sports pages.
* Put all the sports stories on the Web site (Errrrr, website).
And since he's also the interim managing editor:
* Copy edit all news stories.
* Copy edit the editorial page.
* Copy edit all the pages the editorial assistant lays out because she misses a lot of things.
* Edit the photos that appear on the front page.
* Lay out pages 1 & 3 and certain special tabs.
* Put all the news stories on the website.

Every coach has been made aware of the situation that this journalist has been in since last February.(That's 2009 because we can't find anyone who can fill that job.) I don't have time to babysit them. Call or it doesn't get in until the day after. Period. I don't have time to find you while I'm working on 5-6 pages by myself.

Certainly, my situation is unique. But remove the news duties and the normal duties for a 1-man sports department at a very-small circulation daily morning paper does not allow time to track down all the other coaches.

 

Well, then it seems like you shouldn't be holding the space for these dimwits. If they can't get the info to you, fuck 'em.

The policy we have is quite simple. If you EMAIL us something, we'll go above and beyond to get it in. If you Fax it, well, then it all depends on how we're feeling that day. If you don't do one of the two, your info is only getting in if we need to fill space.

 

I don't. It's been four years since we made the switch to becoming one of the smallest morning dailies anywhere and I've figured out who doesn't care enough to get their stuff in on time.

Someone tried to call me out on it online as a comment to one of my stories: "If you don't call by 11, he won't put it in." Yeah, for two reasons, dimwit: 1) The deadline is 11 and 2) Your coach wouldn't call if the deadline was 11 a.m. the next morning (and often didn't when we were an afternoon paper).

 

I am always nice to airline agents. They can make your trip go smoothly or screw you.

 

That and wait staff. I always find that being kind and considerate goes a long way.