It's Monday morning and I need a support group

I'm getting email assault from a woman who wanted a team photo of the 8-under "Yankees" in the paper; a team that hasn't won anything, she said, only that "We as parents are soooo proud of these kids."
Fine. Take them to a damn ice cream parlor. The rest of the community would think of them as just another team and their friends from other teams will say "You didn't win a thing. You don't deserve anything in the paper." Which kicks their kids' egos in the ass while the hypernut moms get some sick satisfaction from it. When will these idiots learn? Please God, don't let her husband be a prominent advertiser.

 

Give her number to advertising to see if they can run a tab of nothing but team photos. Tell if they can sell it, you will do it.

It's local!!!

 

What is your paper's policy about youth sports team photos? Do you run them at all? Do you have specific criteria (written or otherwise) about which ones run? More important: Is there a precedent for doing what they're asking? Because if you've run meaningless (i.e., non-championship) team photos in the recent past, you don't have much of an argument for not running this one.

That said, now would be an excellent time to publish a short editor's note -- perhaps in breakout box form -- on the local/youth sports page about:
(1) how to submit information and photos
(2) what kind of information you will run
(3) when/where it will run, and
(4) the usual disclaimers about "subject to editing for clarity" and "only when space is available" and "submitted in a reasonably timely fashion" and etc., etc., etc.

Good luck. You'll need it.

 

hack,

C'mon. Do a real story on this team. Check to see if any of the coaches are registered sex offenders. See if any of the birth certificates were doctored.

Was the team using illegal bats? Did the parents slide cokes to the ump to gain preferential treatment?

All kids of stories out there if you just look.

 

They did all those things and still haven't won anything?

Reminds me of last summer, when one of the local swim clubs asked if we'd take photos of their first meet of the year. I said fine, as long as someone sent in results. (We don't staff high school meets, so won't go to a kid meet). Next week, they ask if they can send in their own pictures. Fine with me ... shooter can go do something else newsside. Pictures arrive with a note "we don't have any results, but the kids had a lot of fun." Delete! And that's how I got the inspiration for the line at the bottom of this message.

 

Establish a policy or reiterate the one you have before summer youth league crap like this arrives in full force.

Then stick with it. Prominent advertiser's little team? Buy an ad or create a "Youth Sports League Tab" and be done with it.

 

I kinda wanted to be part of your other support group.

 

Well by all means, PM me on that one. I kind of got nervous after 72 looks and no response...it made me feel like I overreached with the personal stuff.

 

These photos drive me nuts. I can't even tell you how pissed I am when I see one cross my desk. What I've done to keep my sanity is agree with my editor to send some to our Neighbors page, I added a photo to our agate page and will run one there and we do a photo page on Sunday's with local prep photos we didn't use during the week that I'll throw one of these awful photos on. I have a kid who plays all kinds of sports and still don't understand why parents send these things in when there isn't a story behind it other than the, "These kids work hard too and we are so proud of them," crap they give all of us.

 

Be glad you don't work at a small community newspaper. I get that crap all the time. And, of course, I have to run it since it's not like we're a serious newspaper. And usually the captions are filled with poor grammar (for example, one lady spelled "Soccoor" instead of "soccer." And she did it throughout the entire caption, so I'm certain it wasn't a typo. Yeah, I'm gonna go postal.

 

We (or maybe I should say I) started a weekly Community Sports last fall as a place to put all of that crap.

Truth be told, I personally would just as soon never run it at all. I'd far rather read an interesting feature on the World Cup or NHL or just about anything instead of that. But I figured bitting the bullet one day a week would solve a lot of whining and get the stuff out of the way. (Most of the stuff takes place on weekends and our weekend sections are chok full of important stuff.)

Now I get 3 or 4 photo submissions per week, the majority being team shots with 8-20 heads in the photo and massive cutlines. Obviously, we have nowhere near the space to run them all, so I had to set a loose criteria and explain to some parents that we aren't running photos of some fourth-grade YMCA basketball team that just wend 3-32 for the season. You either win your league title, or at least win a tournament, to even get considered. And even then it all depends what else we've got that week.

Truth be told, the only people who give a shit are the ones who send it in. So you get, what, maybe 20 extra people buying that day's paper to see little Johnny Bedwetter and his teammates on page 6B? No one else in our readership gives a shit and why would they?. I consider it a disservice to readers to waste our valuable space on too much of this nonsense.

 

I think cutlines are jumping the shark in all of this.

Team name, where they played and what they did. Doing a dozen names (which probably won't match up anyway) is a waste of your company's time.