Dear dimwit on the phone

Our previous publisher was an advocate of "hyper local." But she would still allow AP on the inside if it was needed to fill.

Our new publisher is even MORE "hyper local." He doesn't want us to run an opinion page if we don't have local content for it. Until the first day that we had to dump the opinion page because there wasn't anything local -- not even a letter to the editor -- I'd never heard of a daily paper that didn't have an opinion/editorial page.

We got calls from readers pissed about missing what had been a regularly-scheduled syndicated columnist. Hasn't changed his mind, though. His comment was, "Well, that's not what the readers really want. They want their local paper to be local." Yeah, so what about those half-dozen people who complained? At least we heard from them. I honestly don't recall anyone ever complaining that there wasn't enough local or too much non-local content. I don't think either publisher knew what the readers wanted for one simple reason: We've never asked them.

 

Our situation is a little different, in that we have a major university in our coverage area that readers expect us to feature prominently, which we do. I think we've been able to strike a balance between emphasizing the local stories while not overlooking the big state and national stories.

 

We've switched to a more narrow web width, taking away about a column per page, plus a local story budget that puts us in a position to have an all-local front pretty much every day, August through May. As a result, we run lot less wire copy than we did 10 years ago - and the wire we do run, excluding the in-season MLB coverage is rather carefully ... curated, might be the right word.

 

We bumped the Super Bowl to a brief on page 2 in order to run extra photos and agate of the local disk golf tournament. Now THAT'S hyper local. It's also insane.

 

Well, the organizer did specifically mention in his many emails that it was a big event. I haven't even heard from the Super Bowl people yet.

 

And don't forget, the NFL is on the way out and disk golf is the NEXT BIG THING!

 

Sad to say I have known and (briefly) worked for people who actually thought this way.

What I tried to remind them was just because you happen to live in Podunk doesn't divorce you from the rest of the universe. There are things that happen outside the city limits that affect you and are of equal, if not greater, interest. Sadly, this philosophy isn't unique to sports. It permeates news just as much, if not worse.

 

So who won the disk golf tournament, Mr. Keep Us In Suspense?

 

Tonight's version:

RING RING.

ME: Daily Grunt Sports, Starman.

CALLER: Calling to report a score.

(pause)

ME: Go ahead

CALLER: 63-61.

(long pause)


CLICK

 

ME: Who won?

CALLER: We did.

Click.

There....FTFY

 

So an 8-year-old girl who swims for the in-town club (which has 90 kids, according to the girl's mom), set the state record for:
gender + age + stroke + distance + indoors

Basically it is something like the 8-year-old girls' 50-yard freestyle shortcourse record

Girl does not live in our county (or the two neighbor counties we happen to cover). Does not go to school in any of the three counties. Now mom and dad do work here, go to church here and like I said, she swims for local club, but that's where the ties stop.

She couldn't understand why a youth boys' basketball team photo ran in today's paper (on page B4 in black and white near the bottom) over her daughter. Wouldn't accept more names/faces. Wouldn't accept that those kids were all local.

Turns out she did NOT set the state record on technicalities:

- State record must be set at State meet (at least high school track and cross country are this way)
- The former record holder actually had a faster time as an 8-year-old than her record time, but it didn't count because she achieved it while "jumping up/bumping up" to face 10-year-olds for better competition.

Mom tells me she works in town as a lawyer.

I ask her why where she works and what she does should sway me into putting a photo of one person in over a team of 10 locals, especially when we do not print parents' names or names of schools unless the parent is in the photo or the person accomplishes the feat as a representative of said school.

Lawyer Lady had no response.

 

fucking wise-ass journalists.