Dear dimwit on the phone

So you quote them on how good their freshmen teammates played that night. Not ideal, but proves your point to the coach, I suppose.

 

I always hate coaches who do that - Kids aren't (completely) ignorant as to who the best players on their team are.

 

Yes, I'd just pass. If the coach doesn't want to make the players available, then just use the coach quotes and call it good.

That said, I've found that many (not all) freshmen are tough quotes just because they are so young and not used to the process. So I'll typically search out a junior or senior for quotes anyway...assuming of course that they did something relevant in the game.

 

You're right about freshmen, but I try to talk to them when I get the chance so they get used to it now. There are plenty of kids that are graduating now that are familiar with me and don't have a problem talking to me and it's because I talked to them when they were giving me four word answers as 14-year olds.

 

Reading quotes from 5 years ago with a (very superb) girls athlete and looking at her interviews now..night and day.

 

Another great moment in "Dear Dimwit" history: Email sent over the weekend asking why we don't have youth sports box scores, because they try so hard and we all know the routine. What would they do at SportsJournalists.com? Send a note back saying we'll take them on a leaguewide basis, not piecemeal (except for all-stars), so you may want to talk to officials with your child's league.

 

I have started a "Youth Spotlight" here at my shop. It's a quarter-page on B3 featuring championship pictures, action shots, a little bio of a random kid, etc. It has become a huge hit for those who want a picture in the paper. I've never gotten so many phone calls about anything else.

 

Just got off the phone.
Yes, sir, I understand your daughter had two hits in the third place game at state to send your team to the state championship round. However, the girl you just mentioned as not being on the All-Tournament team at state just signed a scholarship to play softball at a Division II school. Your daughter hasn't. I'm sure your daughter is key, but one all-tourney team mention isn't exactly a "superstar" stat.

 

Dear overbearing track parent,
I don't know if you've read our paper the last four years, but you'll notice that preps is our top priority, followed by the local college hoops team. And since we have a freelancer who sends us briefs on what former HS athletes are doing in college, we don't care your son is running for a mediocre college track team in a mediocre conference, even if the conference championships are down the road. Covering state HS track, gymnastics and JV hoops is more important. Stop harassing us.
-Rhody

 

Dear pissed off mom...

Our paper is called "The Press"...not "The Podunk Press" as you claim repeatedly, and we have no obligation to exclusively cover Podunk High, while ignoring the eight other high schools in our area.

And no, when Podunk High gets its first league win with two weeks left in the regular season, don't expect us to have a reporter, photographer and full-page spread in the upcoming issue. At the end of the day, your team is still ranked 43rd out of the 43 big-school teams in the entire state...yes, our state does an RPI system for the playoffs.

And for the record, when we did get the score the next day, I did some follow-up calls and found a file photo for a nice sideline piece about the upset (over the city rival).

Of course the mom made a point to send a second email saying that was not enough.

She also repeats her claims that Podunk never gets covered...so tomorrow she will be receiving an basic email listing each of the dates this school season where she can dig up a paper and find Podunk coverage.

 

This is by far the best thing I've done in terms of public relations. We started counting all stories a couple years ago for the nine schools across our coverage area and broke it out by sport so anytime someone calls with the "You never cover the Podunk Swim team!", it takes us about 30 seconds to email back saying "Actually, they've been covered X times, which is higher than X other swim teams in our coverage area and more than the gymnastics, hockey and girls basketball teams at Podunk this season".

Shuts them right up.

 

What if they are right! LOL