Dear dimwit on the phone

I do that quite often. Get my interviews or whatever done, then come in later and do the work when there is some peace and quiet. Works well for an old veteran that needs to think a little rather than listen to music while he writes!

 

Had a somewhat semi-related issue like this crop up at one of my papers. We'd be taking the phone results from the coaches until a certain deadline, then shut the phones off so we could compile the roundups and put together the section. Most coaches would know what the time was, and not bother us.

But a few coaches would still try to sneak through, and end up not getting us. So they would call the news desk. We'd get a news desker come over and say that they had a phone call. We'd ask them to take a message. They'd give us a dumbfounded look, like they didn't know what to do, and want to transfer the call to us. We'd keep telling them to take the damn message, they'd look clueless, until we'd give up and tell them to transfer the call.

And of course, sometimes they were results calls, and other times they were the dimwits who wanted their bar bets settled.

 

Had a lady call once to complain that a tennis tournament we had listed on ESPN wasn't on ESPN. Never mind that it wasn't on ESPN and we didn't say it was on ESPN. It had also been rained out too, but she was on the wrong station anyway.

A few Olympics ago with NBC and their delayed-for-primetime broadcasts which often times didn't follow their announced schedule of events, some lady called up really pissed off that what we had listed wasn't on when we said it would be. She then went to point out in a very condescending and passive-aggressive manner that our rival newspaper and USA Today had the exact same TV listings, but wanted to know why WE got it wrong. Turned out she had no idea it was a delayed broadcast even though the Olympics were taking place on the other side of the world.

 

Got a VM on Sunday where a guy called our paper "a rag," ripped our department in particular and then left his number and asked if I would please call him back. I'm dumbfounded by that last part.

 

Not an issue for us as our newsies are long gone by our deadine.

 

Do you get a lot of complaints from angry people demanding to know why stuff isn't in the paper.... that wouldn't even be in the paper? Like wondering why the college football polls that come out Sunday aren't already in Sunday's paper. Or why the bowling tournament ESPN is showing that was played six months ago isn't in today's TV listings.

On a side note, we run hole in ones made by local residents. One guy tried to report an albatross his friend made because of how much rarer that is than a regular old hole in one. Not only that, he wanted us to write a full story about it.

 

At least he was polite enough to ask you to call him back ...

 

We get stuff like this all the time, but it's usually about why something like a picture of some kid's deer -- which was taken in November, but not turned in to us until January -- hasn't been in the paper. Or a youth football team winning a championship in November, only to wait till today to turn photos in. If you can't get shit to us in a timely matter, why bother?

 

Yeah, dealt with that a lot in doing our weekly community sports page. I tolerated a lot of fluff, but I had to edit stuff down quite a bit.... your youth soccer team story isn't getting 8 paragraphs when everyone else's gets just two because of space limitations. (and if you can't even remember to put the final score of the game in your submission, you might not even get two.)

The thing I learned in regards to photos (and copy) is never to promise to run anything. Set a deadline and if stuff gets sent in on time and is legit news I try to get it in. Photos run on a space available basis. And, please, don't send me the same people in photos every week. We established a one photo per person per year policy in order to work in a larger variety of people.

And if I get a photo more than 2-3 weeks old, there needs to be a genuine news angle connected to it or it won't run.

 

Mark2010 has the right approach. Some contributors will write volumes on their under-8 soccer team: How long the practiced, how hard they worked, and the obligatory: "Way to go, Nosepickers! We're proud of you!!!" Just as easy to cut it to "Podunk Youth Soccer's under-8 team won the Shelbyville tournnament, beating Springfield 2-1 in the title game. Front row ..."

 

I got something like that a couple of days ago. Local girl just signed a scholarship to play softball at the local juco. So momma decided to turn in the pics herself and do her own write up. Daughter has "played softball sence (sic) she was four years old she had has a passion sence she held a ball in her hand 14 years ago." Also includes the names of her parents and older sister ... and a brief bio on her even though it has nothing to do with her "(Princess') sister is is (Queenie Podunk) who has been on the (Podunk Juco) dance team for three years* and will graduate the nursing program in May 2013."

The SOP is for the high school's AD to contact the parents, coach and I to find a time we can all gather for a picture at the high school library. But she didn't want to do that because her daughter's going to play for a traveling team this year instead of the high school.

* - Um, three years? It's a two-year school. Even if she needs an extra year to graduate from the nursing program, how does she get to be on the cheer squad for a third year?

 

Maybe she got an injury hardship waiver?