Dear dimwit on the phone

Got an e-mail from, yes, the local roller derby team early this week looking for a story on couple members of their team being selected to the national team to play at the first ever "world cup" event later this year.

No better way to drum up interest from the local media than by slamming them first:

"Every day I hear or read about the sports from across the countrry and in the USA, it would be nice to hear about some local sports news."

Of course being a daily paper in a city of 100,000, we never cover the what's going on locally [/blue font]. Secondly, when your two team members that have been selected to the national team go by the names TAZ and Gunpowder Gertie, I don't exactly call it a sport. Some brand of sports entertainment, fine, that's why we have an entertainment and lifestyles section.

 

you go Beef...yes, what are people thinking?
"You suck, but will you do a story on me? Really, I'll be doing you a favor, I'm sure readership will soar, if you'll just focus locally on me and what I'm doing."

lol

 

I hear from the roller derby folks too. They say they're a year away from starting up, but they're trying to gear up publicity by holding a car wash Saturday morning, and why don't you come down a do a story.

Do a story on what? A car wash? A team that might even play a game? A trasshsport like roller derby? And on a Saturday morning after I've been working until midnight slapping out pages?

 

Buuuuuttt...one of them "might" be hot...so if you are single. DO IT!

 

yeah, but the hot ones all have girlfriends

 

Whenever a phone call starts with something along the lines of, "I don't read the paper/mean to be critical but..." I grimace.

On the first point, if you don't read the paper, what's the point of calling? The majority of the time, it's calling to criticize us for something that wasn't actually in the paper but something they heard from other people, who themselves likely don't read the paper.

On the second point, yes, you do mean to be critical. That's the point of your call isn't it? Be honest.

 

If anyone ever called me and insinuated we didn't cover enough local sports and then asked for coverage, I would tell them we already had a big write-up on their league/team/all-star kid. They obviously don't read the paper, so they wouldn't know if they missed it. And based on how helpless people seem to be when they're trying to find copies of past editions, I don't think they will be able to dig one up if you tell them it was about a month ago.

 

Beef, I've managed to push the roller derby folks to lifestyles/entertainment by using the argument that we don't have enough staff to cover them plus everything we currently cover - which is true.

They have matches once every couple of months here and believe me, it's a sport. I've seen them practice, seen the rules and a couple games. The entertainment aspect tends to blur the line a bit, but it's not as though they're orchestrating games a la WWE.

The entertainment aspect also makes it easier to pass off coverage elsewhere in the paper, but other than that a roller derby story would be similar to a one-off feature on a BMX rider or snowboarder.

Totally understand not wanting to deal with a media-basher, though.

 

I WANT to do a story on local roller derby team. The PR person/skater listed on the team website won't get back to me.

 

Had this same problem as well. After about six months or so, they finally flipped PR people, and the new one is much more responsive. Found me a person from my area within a week, and had the interview and photo-op arranged.

 

I am friends with a few women throughout Florida who participate in roller derby, and for what it's worth, they are elated and post the hell out of it online whenever a newspaper does a story on them. It could be an interesting one-off feature, and I've seen few things get sent around online with more excitement from the people involved.

 

No call connected with this one, except one I made to confirm some IDs in the photo, but another you've-got-to-be-kidding-me youth sports moment that may top the USSSAA's "world championships."

Group out of Cooperstown that puts on youth baseball tournaments in the summer for travel teams. I get a photo and info from one of the parents that I'm putting into a cutline. The last line: "All three were inducted into the youth baseball hall of fame." WTF, I say ... but I Google it, and, yes, in Cooperstown there's a youth baseball hall of fame as well. Every team that plays in this group's tournaments is "inducted."

Oh, well, I'm sure it'll look good on the kids' resumes in 10 years or so.