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Dear dimwit on the phone

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Starman, Jan 21, 2010.

  1. RedSmithClone

    RedSmithClone Active Member

    couldn't agree more.
     
  2. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member


    I don't believe in tipping; I believe in overtipping...

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  3. NCGOLF14

    NCGOLF14 New Member

    Dear coach who has foreign exchange students who just happen to play tennis really well every year on your team:

    Yes, we understand that your team is very good. They are very good every year, but your team is forty minutes from our office and nobody around here cares about your school. We put the second place team in the conference in the paper more because 2,000 more people read it and they aren't more than 10 miles from where we work.

    Like always, we'll cover you in the playoffs until the very end when you lose to a team in the state title match, again. Don't complain because nobody cares. And if you want more coverage, it'll eventually come in the form of an investigative piece on how you happen to have "GREAT FREAKING TENNIS PLAYERS FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY EVERY YEAR ON YOUR TEAM," if you blast us for lack of coverage, again.

    Thanks,

    Sports writer who hates every team he covers equally
     
  4. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    Folks, I wish I could make this up but here's an actual letter I got in my inbox today. (Names changed, obviously, to protect the incompetent).

    =====

    Hi SchiezaInc,

    My name is Local Track Parent, mother of track athlete Local Track Kid @ Local High School Just wondering
    if Local Track Kid could get a little press for his performance at yesterdays meet @Local Middle School. He finished 1st in the high jump (never competed in this event until this year) 1st in pole vault (finished 3rd in the state last year) and his team finished 2nd and broke our school record in the 4x1. I have never written to any paper asking for anything like this, but Local Track Kid is a senior at Local High School and deserves recognition. His GPA is 4.45 and is going to be inducted into the Spanish Honor Society this evening. He also was voted the friendliest in his graduating class. There,, I'm done bragging for now. I'd appreciate anything you could do.

    Local Track Parent.

    ===

    Really? Friendliest in his class? Shit, why didn't you tell me before? I could have based an entire week's worth of coverage on his smile and laugh. ::)
     
  5. Appgrad05

    Appgrad05 Active Member

    Seems like he's a pretty impressive athlete. And he's certainly not a dumb jock. Have you written at all about him? Why did this upset you so much?
    Maybe take the friendliest thing (which, I agree, sounds absurd on the surface) and see how it manifests itself. Maybe there is some decent color about him befriending people during meets, or his friendliness shocking competitors. Or him working after practice with a young kid to make the 4x1 team better.
    Shit, that e-mail sounds like a parent who is proud of their kid. The horror.
     
  6. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I'm with APPgrad. You didn't include the times and heights so I don't know if he won with a 3-6 high jump or what but don't you do features or players of the week or something on kids now and then?
     
  7. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    What pissed me off about this was that I was actually AT the meet, covering said team and wrote about said kid.

    This is the second time this has happened this week.

    I just hate getting emails like this right before I go to press with an article that praises the kid in question. Makes it seem like it had an impact on me and encourages other parents to write in about little Johnny and his ability to air guitar "Enter Sandman".
     
  8. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Slappy: This post came to mind tonight when an e-mail with high school baseball results rolled in after 11 p.m. Yes, we're an afternoon paper, but we work an evening shift, since that's when sports happens. Our section's press run starts at 6 a.m. or so, so dayside can't do it for me. And I'm certainly not pulling an all-nighter ripping up the section for a team I haven't heard from all year until the second-to-last week of the season. I need nourishment, liquid refreshment and, above it all, sleep, dammit. If you can't get something to me before that last major league box rolls in, it goes in the next day's paper. If someone doesn't like it, try sending or calling us with scores right after the game, like the other schools do?
     
  9. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Goes in the next day's paper? Bull-fucking-shit.
    Dear coach, sports are timely, we are a daily. You get it in the night of the game by 11 p.m. or not at all. Disappointing the kids, you say? Your game was done at 8 p.m. Why are you sending it after midnight?


    Have a girls golf coach who has done things her way for years. Slow, at her own pace and she's not going to change. Asks me what I need and I'll respond A. I'll get B.
    Last week, we had a golf sectional at a course 10 miles away from her school. First tee time was 8 a.m., playing devil's advocate it got done at 4 p.m. It got to the paper at 10:18 p.m. -- 48 minutes after first edition deadline for preps as 12 minutes before Metro.
    And if you say anything to her, looking at her coke bottle glasses, pencil-eraser hair and body by Fred Flintstone, she'll stare at you like a dog would, complete with cocking her head on occasion for a better look.
     
  10. doubledown68

    doubledown68 Active Member

    Wrote a story recently about a high school sophomore who was finding his way after his older brother (by 10 years) died of cancer a few years ago. The kid didn't veer way off course and get into drugs or anything like that. More like how he found solace playing baseball like his brother did, etc.

    One minor footnote in the story was how he lost some weight heading into high school so he could play middle linebacker.

    Got a message the next day.... from the so-called trainer. He was whining about how the trainer is always left out, and how he's the best trainer in town, and how the subject of the story is always asking himself WW(the trainer's initial)D. Just 45 seconds of the most self-serving bullshit I've ever heard.

    He left a number... but I didn't call him back. Because a productive discussion would've been hard to come by.
     
  11. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    You get that a lot from people who make their livings working with athletes on the side. If the kid brought up in the interview how this trainer or clinic or sports performance routine made all the difference, I could see putting it in.

    If the kid doesn't mention it or make a big deal about it, what are you supposed to do?
     
  12. apeman33

    apeman33 Well-Known Member

    I think the two most common themes in this thread are:

    1) People just can't conceive that there's a deadline. People apparently think that we come in around 6 p.m., sit around til 10 or 11, then type constantly for 6 hours (There are people who think I write the Royals summaries sent in by AP), set the paper up at 5 a.m. and get that thing printed and distributed in 30 minutes. So, yeah, why can't it get in if they called at half-past midnight?

    2) People don't understand that news doesn't magically appear right in front of us. We can't go to your game if we don't know when it is. We can't give you a score if nobody told us what it was (and, going back to the previous point, they probably didn't tell us the game was being played). And it's great that little Jimmy Shitkicker set a record at the school 45 minutes from here but your coach has apparently decided to use telepathy to inform us about it and our telepathy budget was cut to nothing this year. We don't even know who Jimmy Shitkicker is because your coach didn't return the form we sent him before the season started, didn't tell us when your games were and never reported a score.
     
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