Dear dimwit on the phone

This gets to the heart of something important. One size, one approach, does not fit all. (Sorry, Gannetters.) You have to put in the effort to know your market and understand what you readers' expectations are. That doesn't mean you then have to pander to them, but you do have to take them into account.

 

It's only front page if one of the players get kidnapped.

Heard of that happening, too.

 

Thanks, Henry. You opinion means a lot.

I think their are things we all need to be doing, but the focus needs to be different from paper to paper.

 

Agree with this. A hard and fast rule like, "High school coverage trumps youth league!" won't work in every town. From a sheer numbers and interest standpoint, actually, I kind of wonder if that conventional wisdom should be turned on its head. A high school baseball or soccer team has about 40 kids on it at most, between varsity and junior varsity. A single section of the local Little League (i.e. the 10 and 11-year-old league) will have around a hundred kids at least. I just run an Internet site with inconsistent sports coverage, but recaps of the youth softball league (basically, five minutes of edit work) does roughly the same as all of our non-football high school coverage.

 

ME: Podunk Daily, this is Peacer

CALLER: I'm calling in regards to the brief you ran on today's sports page. You said ALL of Podunk High's events have been canceled because of weather.

ME: As far as I know, they are all canceled. <checks today's paper since I was off yesterday> Yep, all canceled.

CALLER: No, they're not.

ME: They're not?

CALLER: Nope, the state speech meet is happening right here in Podunkville.

ME: Oh, well the brief we ran in the sports section actually said "all sporting events."

CALLER: <disheartened> Oh. OK, then. <hangs up>

 

Anyone work at a paper where the SE will continuously take the word of these dimwits over his/her own employees?

For example, if a dimwit complains that something's not in the paper even though it is (or it hasn't even taken place yet), our SE will ask us why it's not in the paper without checking first. This happens all the time.

One caller complains about our lack of college track and field coverage, that very weekend we send a reporter to cover an unimportant meet. And then we never have a reporter cover another meet or write a track and field feature ever again.

 

I'm not involved specifically in sports, but one of my co-workers will also send me frantic e-mails or texts or GChat messages asking if I've covered calamity X, Y or Z in my town, because she takes a couple of shitty college courses here and adjuncts for a class. 95 percent of the time, I've already reported on it and she never looks first, she just assumes I haven't done it, which I do take as a bit of an affront.

 

Had a managing editor do some dumb shit at times, always overreacting to the latest phone call without checking anything. One time, took a complaint that we never wrote about the local player who was a starting linebacker at State. Came to our cubicles, chewed us out for not following a major story, then walked off. I went to the archives, found the most recent five stories on the guy, most were written in the past month, walked into the ME's office, and slapped them on his desk. "Here's all those stories we never ran." Didn't say shit to us. Didn't apologize. I had heard from other reporters that he pulled shit like that all the time. Never paid attention to his own product. He eventually got fired.

 

Good.

Part of being a leader is inspiring your charges, not berating them when it's not helpful. Give me a boss who I know has my back and I'll run through a wall for him/her.

 

Same can be said for the Army, not just the newsroom. It's a lot easier to take orders from someone who you know has your best interests in mind.

 

"What's the win-loss record of Team?"

"You know when you called yesterday asking that same question? Just add one."


I came across an article that said AOL still makes $500 million on dial-up modem service. Considering how many people call the paper asking simple questions that a Google search could answer in 10 seconds, I'm inclined to believe that there's this huge dial-up middle ground between "fully wired" and "needs the newspaper on speed dial."

 

This was sent to us as a letter to the editor, can someone explain the situations? Am I missing something?

"Some examples of sportsmanship: a baseball player breaking an opponent's limb; a basketball player propelling his body on top of another player in anger; a race car driver causing another to break his back, and finally a women's basketball player giving a black eye with her elbow.

Are we going back to the age of the Romans and fulfilling the prophecy of the hunger games?"

Uhhh...what?