Dear dimwit on the phone

Well, wouldn't it be more prudent to advance it to one of the 16 major and minor league all-star teams of other posts made on the board this week so that no one's feelings get hurt?

I just don't want my replies in the Steven Tyler quits American Idol thread to lose out on a chance at a scholarship.

 

I know you didn't want to interview him, but did it really hurt your story to do so?

A simple, "Bobby hit two home runs for the Bumfuck All-Stars on Monday.
'I'm really happy we won," said Bobby.' " near the end of the story doesn't really hurt it and may end up helping you in the future with access when Bobby is drafted by the Pirates.

 

I don't want to interview coaches, not in high school or youth sports. The kids are playing so the kids should speak. My only concession to their age is not blatantly chasing off the coaches/parents. Luckily, the kids usually do that for me.

 

But if you don't talk to the coach, how will you know whether or not the team is taking it one game at a time???

 

I worked with two folks not long ago who would only talk to coaches after games and such. Annoyed the hell out of me. When I asked to interview the quarterback after one game, the coach looked at me and asked "Why?" He told me the two other writers had never asked to interview any players after games they covered.

I never understood why they did it, and I never got a straight answer out of either of them.

 

I had two freelancers who would only talk to coaches at my last shop. One eventually came around when I told him the kids' parents buy the paper, not the coaches' parents. The other kept right on interviewing coaches and maybe throwing in a player quote every few weeks. I started using him less and less.
When I asked him why, he told me that's the way he's always done it. (ftr "that's the way we've always done it" is not a good reason to do anything). His other reason was that he didn't feel teenagers were capable of giving good quotes, even though I would talk to the same kids and never have any trouble. We're not asking them for War & Peace. We're asking them for two complete sentences.
The breaking point came when we had a player break 1000 career points in basketball. He went into the game with 993 and it was a game with the No. 3 team in the state vs a team barely above .500. I told him that afternoon not to write it like a usual gamer. What happens, he gives me his typical gamer with "Bobby Shooter scored his 1,000th career point." and one brief quote from the player tacked on at the end.

 

I've found that some high school kids can be very articulate and others do have trouble coming up with two coherent sentences. Usually after a little time on a beat, you figure out who the good talkers are.

I was never much for interviewing the 8-year-olds, though. A colleague once did a piece on some age-group swimmer phenom and almost all the quotes were from coaches or parents. Asked him why and he shrugged "the kid just wouldn't talk". At least he tried.

 

It's trying just as hard as the other threads.

 

We've got a few kids here that getting something decent from them is like pulling teeth. Hard to do a good feature on someone won't open up about anything.

 

Two years in a row, I've written a story on girls' doubles teams that made the state tournament. In each case, one girl would barely speak and the other was a blabbermouth. The second time, the coach asked the blabbermouth to come over and talk to him and I continued with the shy one, who was able to muster a couple of decent quotes.

Coach admitted that was why he called the blabbermouth over. Their dynamic was the same in practice: Blabbermouth dominated but shy one would open up once Blabbermouth was gone. He was trying to do me a favor, figuring the same thing would happen with the interview.

 

Always nice when a coach "gets it" like that.

 

So reading that launched me into an aside, which I felt could to be opened up to the masses. I've had bosses that are adamant we need both coaches quoted in gamers. At times I find it a bit constricting, because I'm working with tight space, and I have to shoehorn in a quote that, at some points, I feel isn't needed, save for an arbitrary rule. It's also problematic, because a 12-15 inch gamer only needs so many quotes and always having two coach quotes puts a limit on the number of player quotes I might want to use. Does any one else run into this? Or anyone think I'm completely wrong? Just want to know if I'm alone here.