Why I drink ... phone calls.

What? Executives made decisions without thinking it through? Amazing!

 

Yep... But it's what happens when your bosses' bosses' bosses are stationed all the way across the country and have a blanket policy.

Either way, we're the ones who deal with the backlash.

 

I had one of these the other night. I was out covering election night in a town near ours but outside of our coverage area. Sure enough, one of the guy's supporters comes over and says "Who are you with?" I mumble our paper's name and he hands me his card and says "I've got news for you."

Him - "You're going to want to be at city hall on Monday."

Me - "Sir, I must say that we do not cover City at all."

Him - "I'm an advertiser and I'm having all my guys there. We're giving $50,000 to the city at the Monday meeting.

Me - "That's great of you sir, but we really don't ever cover City, it's out of our area."

Him - "You'll be there, I'm telling you. I've got a lot of pull."

Me, with a smirk - "Alright then."

Me, thinking to myself - "You don't realize that I'm the ME and I really don't give a shit, but if you really want to push me, I can write a story about how you take money from doing business in our community and don't put a cent back, instead sending it to City. Thanks for playing, that's some pull you've got bucko."

 

Then there's the pissing match I get into with the city editor every now and then. She's in days, I'm in nights. A mom drops off some info about her son being invited to a combine in the Midwest, from which he might qualify to be in an all-star game on TV. Needs to raise a bunch of money. City editor thinks its a great story, the sports guys should do it. I look at the info and do a little googling. It's another one of those combine mills promising lots of exposure. Looks interesting, but maybe not worthy of a full-blown feature, especially when we've got playoffs. Plus, I just don't think it's part of the job to do a story on everyone in town raising money. But tell the city editor about it. I'll give it a good plug in my column ... but I'm not sure it's worth a full-blown feature.

 

Not a phone call, but a funny story I want to share ...

I went to court for a hearing on Friday about a guy who wants to withdraw his guilty plea. He was accused of shooting his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend in the leg last year. I'm in the front row of the gallery, and everyone's waiting on the judge, who's running a bit late.

Since we're allowed to dress down on Fridays (or I just do it anyway), I'm in jeans and an untucked, button-down long-sleeve shirt. Under that, I'm wearing a blue Superman shirt. They inmate notices the logo because I don't have the top buttoned up all the way.

"You like Superman?"
"Yeah, I grew up on comics."
"I've got one of those shirts, too."
"That's cool."
"Yeah, the last time I wore it, I got shot in the head ..."

Now, this is true. After he shot the guy (allegedly), he fled the scene. The cops eventually blew his tires out with spikes, and he was shot in the head during apprehension because he still had the gun. The bullet grazed his skull, but it's hard to tell if it did damage or if the guy's just a dumbass.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much of a comeback to that, so I just blurted out, "So I've heard."

I mean, what do you say to a guy making light of being shot in the head by the cops? I choked. I'm lame, I know.

 

KY, good gosh I can relate to this. Scholarship signing stories are a perpetual pain in the ass. Our policy is also D1. Everyone knows it and yet we constantly get pestered to do stories on D2 or lower. I didn't set the policy. My executive editor did. I follow orders.

Slappy, sometimes I wish they would call as early as 10:30 for a game that ended at 6:30.

I can relate to everything I've seen on this thread.

 

A few weeks ago, we did a feature on a baseball player who is going D-I. He's the best player in the league. The second best player in the league's parents have been calling, complaining. The second best player in the league isn't playing college ball, as of now. We keep saying that there's still time for a story, but it has to be newsworthy.

We've led with him on multiple gamers, because he is really good, but he's not going D-I and wasn't the conference MVP last season like the other guy.

His dad went so far as to call our former sports editor, who retired a few months ago, to say, "I can't get anything done around there."

 

I have several good calls like that over the years too.
The best ever came from the cheerleading people though. They had a competitive cheerleading event at 9 am on a Saturday morning after football. It was the only semi-local event they would be at, so this was my chance to get some photos and the results. I call Monday before the event, and ask for the info, when they will perform and am told we are scheduled for 10 am Saturday.
I tell the coach, "Look, this might be the only chance I get to see you this year because all your cheer meets (yeah I know) are in Atlanta, so if the time changes let me know."
I never hear back from her, I see her Friday night at the football game, I ask her is everything still the same for tomorrow morning, and she says yes.
I get to the school a bit groggy and not too happy to be awake at 9:30 am. Saturday morning after being awake till 5:30 with football.
I walk in to the gym, and the high school event has been moved across the county, and it was moved Tuesday.
Monday morning I get to work to three messages from the cheer coach.
I call her up to find out how they did, and she berates me for 20 minutes about how I didn't care about cheerleading and the girls and the like.
I asked her where the event was, she told me they moved it, Tuesday and I should have known.
At that point I kinda lost it on her telling her just what I really thought of her and her cheer followers. I never had to cover another cheer event, so it was well worth it.

 

Cheerleading is an activity...lump it in with band, choir, chess club -- all on the schools page. Keep that junk off the sports pages. I wrote a column years ago about how worthless cheerleading is and had a truckload of parents calling for my job. More than a decade later, I'm still working in the area and cheerleading is nowhere to be found on my pages.

Sounds like that "coach" was about as ditsy as the members of her team.

 

This is an e-mail not a phone call, but I can't find the e-mail one.

Baseball parent mails the managing editor, not me for some reason, saying "I've noticed there hasn't been any coverage of the baseball team recently. Can you ask about that? I can't make all my son's games and it would be nice to read about it."

I e-mail the ME: "Here's the links to the recent baseball games I've covered: link 1, link 2, link 3. I'm not sure how much more coverage I can give him unless I start writing about games that I make up with a Strat-O-Matic game."

 

I agree with flexmaster. Cheerleading is no a sport than band competition. It stays off my sports pages. Georgiaguy, you put yourself through some needless pain.

 

I don't really want to re-visit those threads, but in some states, cheerleading is *not* just an activity. It's a competition, and the state high school federation sponsors it.

I don't think we can ignore that. (Not that I mind turning it over to news side, because sometimes they will jump at it).

I give Georgiaguy credit, but I certainly fault the coach too.