Dear dimwit on the phone

HanSen vs. the racetrack, round 2:

Woman sent me notes about the weekend program earlier in the day. OK,f ine. Needed a lot of rewriting, but turned into a cute story for a bottom-of-the-page brite. Later in the shift, I notice one note, which I decide not to read until later. But then come two more ... so I open them up. Reader claims I deleted the email without reading it, then fires off noted to my boss and her ad rep complaining about it.

WTF? So I call the techie and get some guidance, then call my boss and make a game plan. So I write back saying I was not deleting her email before reading and I had no idea where she was getting her info. She writes back and noted she'd put a return reciept on it.

DING DING DING DING! The techie told me this happens sometimes when return reciepts are put on email. So I send a note back saying just that ... so she replies saying she was angry and wanting to make sure we got the other email (the one with the brite).

I didn't respond ... because I knew what I really wanted to say, could only be said on SportsJournalists.com:

Dear pain in the ass:
You're not the fucking Fonz. You can say so when you're wrong. Even better, you can say "I'm sorry," not only to me, but to my boss and your ad rep, who you just created a collosal mess for. See, I already called my boss and not only does she know what you did, from Day One, she's had my back. The ad rep will be told the same thing, if not by me, by my boss too. IMHO (and that and 50 cents will get you a copy of our paper), you owe them apologies too.

And if you're expecting anything above and beyond the call of duty right now in terms of coverage by us, think again. And until then, I'd suggest something for you, but for most folks in the free world and what's left of the Communist world, it's anatomically impossible!

 

Here's a raceway story to go along with yours as well. I called yesterday to find out why they weren't running their biggest and fastest class weekly anymore.

Me: This is me from my paper, How are you?
Them: *grumbled voice* Yeah! What ya need?
Me: I was gonna see if you could help me out on why you're not running Supers anymore.
Them: Why is that important? Can I ask that?
What I should have said: It isn't anymore, bye.

 

Race tracks.... UGH!

 

I have had great experience with auto racing promoters and tracks, so have the thousands of people who go to them.

It's not always going to be easy to do the job.

(And, yes, I have dealt with dickheads, too).

 

So have I. When he was running PR for the Southwest Tour, Owen Kearns Jr. was awesome ... and I'm sure he is/was (don't know if he's in the business any more) on the Trucks tour. But that last stunt went over the top.

At the start of the season, we did a story on their initial hall of fame class. The ceremony was rained out and rescheduled, and she got snippy with the other half of the department when we wouldn't run the whole story again. And just last week she claimed we weren't running their announcements at all. Counting my college paper and sports information days, I've been in this racket about 30 years and have acquired a fairly thick skin, but I can only take so much after a while.

 

I've always found that race tracks, semi-pro teams, etc...are mostly looking for PR-type work from the newspaper...deal with any story that touches on a controversy of any sort and they can't handle it. Often times, these "controversies" are only perceived on their end, as well...making much about nothing.

 

yeah, that is why I avoided that stuff like the plague. They just want a glowing story and big photo on the section cover and didn't generate anywhere near the interest to match. And then any negative word about anything would start a shitstorm of "you guys are out to get us".

 

I always hated it whenever someone would ask to run a whole story again.

I'd always tell the complainer, "When people are paying their money to buy this, they're usually expecting something new and different every day."

 

HanSen: That was not at you, it was at Mark's generalization.

You're clearly having an issue. No problem with the vents.

But Mark, if it's something you think the readers need, you just have to deal with it (to a certain point).

 

It's all good BillyT. I described it to the city editor as being similar to "you always cover Podunk East and never Podunk West" during school season.

 

But, dude, you never cover Podunk West.

 

I think I've posted about this issue in this thread before ...

We have several sister papers that are weeklies and we share content with them. No big deal, right? We've had this model in place for years.

But the publisher at my hometown paper, for one reason or another, hates me. I emailed her and some other editors in our company a link to a story I wrote about the community college in this area bringing back sports. I said they could run it, just put my name on it and it'd be all peachy keen.

Well, it wasn't. The hometown paper's publisher changed/added ONE damn thing to my story and took my name off it, passing it off as a generic company staff report. I emailed the hometown paper's publisher, asking her to put my name back on my story, but she never responded. Even stopped by the office, but she supposedly wasn't there that day, even though her vehicle was parked out front and someone I know said she had been there.

So I emailed my publisher and editor, who's on vacation. Publisher didn't do shit, except to tell me to wait till our editor gets back from vacation.

This shit pisses me off to no end. I get that we have an agreement, or whatever, with the smaller papers in our chain. I really do understand that. But that doesn't give them the right to take people's bylines off stories they use.

The publisher in question has done this to me in the past. She once took a preview I wrote on one of the wrestling teams in our area -- the one school they cover, FWIW -- wrote a few grafs lead-in and slapped her name at the top. I emailed her the next day and said she had plagiarized me. Her response? I didn't know that was your story. Bullshit.

I think what pisses me off in this instance is I went to my publisher, thinking he would take care of it for me. But no.

Other than waiting for the editor to come back to work Monday, anyone got any suggestions?