Dear dimwit on the phone

Holy crap!! The one time I even brought up the subject of travelling to cover golf I nearly got laughed out of the building. Glad someone has the resources.

 

Actually, there is a wealth of material for an interesting series if one is willing to dig for it. Had a family member in one last year (since moved home with me) and it was certainly an eye-opener.

 

The police department from the next county over does that at least once a week. They're my favorites!

 

Yesterday, in the midst of a newsroom-wide bloodbath (half our staff was cut), my compatriot was trying to set up photo assignments for our player and coach of the year stories. He told the coach of Old Buck County High that his catcher, who was great all year, was our player of the year. OK there.

He also told him that we were naming the coach of the Little Christian School as coach of the year. The coach was livid. In a series of texts back and forth, he dismissed it as favoritism because "your owner went to Little Christian," how his team wasn't put out of the playoffs by a "piddly little team" and how they beat all of the county schools by a wide margin. I reminded him our owner sold us and that never has mattered anyhow.

Never mind that Little Christian went from 6 wins last year to 20 wins this year, went to the quarterfinals and went from being awful to something special. Since it's the "puppy" league (his words, not mine), it doesn't count.

By that rationale, our all-county team would just be players from the bigger schools in the area.

So what if you beat them? If they're all "puppies," you should beat them! No surprise there. Then he made some off-hand text about how we've screwed the coach before him on coach of the year. Yikes.

I've got to admit that's the first time in my career I've had a coach complain about not being named coach of the year. Most shrug it off as "I wouldn't be here without my players. It's not the Xs and Os but the Jimmies and the Joes."

Guess there's a first time for everything.

 

Not on the phone, but via our Facebook page: We've had a person messaging us for two weeks because she logs in and then she can't read articles. Assuming she means the "e-edition," we've been asking her about her password and log on, if she's refreshed the browser, stuff like that.

Today, she says, " I have gone in on internet explorer and also google chrome. When I log in, I get the welcome {Dimwit} message. When I try to read the news articles it won't let me read the complete article. It says: For complete story, see the regular or electronic edition of The {Podunk Press}."

That's not a problem with logging in. That's our publisher's latest edict: He doesn't want the entire article accessible for free. If you have the e-edition or a subscription to the paper itself, you'll see it in there. And if you don't have a subscription, this is a way to encourage people to get one (Because limiting free views to seven stories a month, then cutting that to three stories a month worked out so well). If she's got an account and a log in, she has two options to be able to read the entire article: The e-edition or her home subscription.

This hasn't appeared to confuse anyone else. So, yeah.

 

How deep did old Old Buck County High go in the playoffs?

Anyway, coach of the year awards are tricky. At my old shop, I recall hearing a girls basketball coach went 22-3 or something, and the coach at crosstown high got the award. Crosstown wasn't as good, but there were very good considering all the talent in town went to the other school.

 

Every response to this is comedy gold.

 

It's "Evelyn", not "Evil Lynn"

 

Now that post calls for a double "Oh, My!"

If this monkey is getting worked up that much over who a newspaper names as coach of the year, he/she has issues.

 

You should see how many people freak out over meaningless weekly rankings our prep reporters put together for all the team sports.

"You're an idiot who doesn't know what you're talking about for having This-And-That School ranked only fourth in the state!"

 

Yeah, that is why I was glad to drop those things. No-win situation, unless you are the kind who can say "Whatever, guys. Argue it out on forums and try not to libel anyone in the process."

 

A few years ago, before my paper had published its all-area basketball team, one of my reporters answered a phone call from someone who didn't identify himself, but asked about our criteria for selecting the coach of the year. The reporter answered the question, but never let on that our office phones have caller ID that displays the name of the caller ... which in this case was one of the coaches in our area. His team had improved that season, but not nearly enough for him to be in the running for coach of the year. We all got a nice laugh out of that. And from that point forward we referred to that guy as "coach of the year."