Dear dimwit on the phone

This isn't a dimwit on the phone, but rather parents who email pictures of their offspring week after week demanding they be put in the paper.

There are two teams -- one baseball, one softball -- from our area who send in crap EVERY FREAKING WEEK. Then there's a handful of other teams that have been in the paper at least three times already this spring. It's beyond ridiculous.

That's the only thing I hate about my paper: the youth page we produce each week. It's a pain in the ass to deal with.

 

Just remember...it could be worse. The last SE I worked with reveled in youth sports...to the point that we covered youth tournies...well, HE covered youth tournies, I told him fuck off (nicely, of course).
I'm not talking, go get the score and maybe write up a gamer from the box...nope, interviews with the coaches, kids...tons of pics. Front page news!
It drove me bat-shit crazy.
Of course, that meant any piss-ant tournament or assemblance of a tournament meant we had to run the "champion" pic and not just on a middle page once a week...the day we got it...in color, perferably!
So, yeah. It could be much worse.

 

I've solved that by bundling the team pics with the weekly signup/tryout announcements. Of course, there's the one four-grade girls basketball team that sends in a shot every effing week after winning some tournament somewhere. Same girls, all holding a trophy and giving the No. 1 sign. At this point, do their parents even care?

And, yes, Baron for SportsJournalists.com HOF.

 

I did that sort of page and you really DO have to lay down the law (in a nice way). Our policy was one photo of a certain individual per year. Didn't matter if it was a team shot, trophy shot, action shot, whatever. I had more than a few arguments with parents and I always told them "some people NEVER get in and I have a stack of photos an inch thick on my desk wanting to be included". Most of the ones with half a brain eventually got the message that Little Johnny Bedwetter's 15 minutes of fame were indeed up.

High school sports, legion baseball and junior hockey were an exception to the hard and fast rule, but I've had more than one incident where I told a photog "Look, we ran John Doe last week. Unless he set some sort of record, give me someone else."

 

You need a better paper.

 

We do an ad page where we run our Little League team shots that get submitted each summer. Seems like an easy sell...businesses are pretty good about sponsoring Little League stuff.

Gives me an easy excuse for keeping the team photo junk out of my sports hole.

 

That's what the money is for.

 

I appreciate a kind word when they come through, but I've learned not to gauge my job performance based on the ups and downs of parent reactions. Do your job the best you know how and be pleased with it. And yes, we all have moments where we wished we could have done more, but guess what, we're human. Mistakes happen and other priorities pop up.

 

I get to a Memorial Day service this morning -- outside in a cemetery -- check in with the organizer and he tells me not to take any photos until afterwards.

I said, "Well, I am here to take these pictures."

The way I look at it, if I hadn't gone, I would have gotten hammered.

It was a good day, though. Interesting stuff.

 

I know..that's why I left last Feb.

 

So did you wait until it was over or not?

 

I didn't think I had to say it, but of course I did.

We're outside, there are people firing guns. It's a public cemetery.

If I wasn't going to take pictures of the color guard, the buglers, the three-shot salute or anything else, I wouldn't have gotten to town an hour early to do this ceremony before the parade.

There, better now.