Dear dimwit on the phone

Got a complaint from the losing side of a state championship game who was upset that our story focused too much on the winners and not the losing team who worked really hard despite the horrible officials and other team playing dirty.

 

Anyone who advocates for himself for coach of the year automatically renders himself unqualified to win it. It's high school sports, jackass. It ain't about you.

 

It's amazing how many people call to bitch about something without ever bothering to read the paper before calling. *SIGH*

 

I had a colleague do that to me. I put out an in-house newsletter and she kept saying I'd put in something wrong. I kept saying no, that was not in the newsletter but she kept insisting it was there. This was in the presence of another person, who called it up on his email and we looked through it to prove to her it wasn't in there.

Even going through the proof, she still wasn't satisfied. "Well, someone told me it was in there and it was wrong."

I don't really raise my voice to colleagues very often, but I finally told her that if she was going to take me to task for something I'd done, she darn well better make sure I'd done it.

 

Whenever a caller complained that something wasn't in the paper and I've proven him or her wrong (although usually they're just completely mistaken about stuff that hasn't even happened yet), not once have I ever gotten an apology or thanks or anything of the sort. They're still not happy and usually just hang up on me or made a snide remark.

A former editor and assistant editor would both take the word of the complainer at full value and ask us why something wasn't in the paper without ever bothering to look first. It was like clockwork. One time three different editors got upset about the same complaint that didn't even involve the sports section and asked us how we could possibly make that mistake.

 

You were surrounded by assholes.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CNJj-PA8lKU

 

Dear Dimwit mother of a delinquent,
I'm sorry that your son got in trouble with the police. However, before you call me up in a huff demanding that we get his side of the story before we print anything — because we apparently have issues with getting facts correct — maybe you should check your facts. None of my reporters were at the scene of your bundle of joy was getting hassled by the cops taking photos. In fact, we would not have known there was such a rare instance of a kid getting hassled by the fuzz going on in our town until you called. I wish that I had known, cuz man, I would have put his face above the fold with a 'Kennedy Shot' headline and talked about how the police saved us from this Hitler of a kid.

 

During my time of overseeing police reports for about 2.5 years, nobody who ever e-mailed in about one ever came off as a rational or sympathetic human being. Small sample size caveat, of course, but it was uncanny.

 

I find the ones who legitimately claim the police made a mistake usually do so rationally and without making wild threats to the paper. They may be miffed, but are usually coherent about it. These are people who end up in the police log or are listed as the town's most wanted for failure to appear. The rest are more upset that they got busted for something stupid and are mad that it was public record.

I had one lady about a year and a half ago now come in with her screaming children just irate that we put that her husband had been on probation when he was arrested on new charges. In between ripping her son's arm out of the socket because he was like 3 and wanted to walk around, she yelled at me that she was getting a lawyer and suing us for slander (and, btw, pointing out to her that you slander through what you say not what you write only made her more pissed, but that was actually kind of funny). I told her "OK, ma'am, I'll be happy to correct it, can you let me know what about the story wasn't true." Her response was basically she wasn't going to tell me what I got wrong because that wasn't something she was obligated to do; I just had to know what I got wrong. After she dragged her screaming kid out of the building, I had my reporter double check the facts. No correction, no follow up and no lawsuit.

 

Oh, man. One place I worked the outside lines would ring at my desk on weekends and there was no warning light.

So I'd get these sob stories from all sorts of people who felt they had suffered terrible harm in the police report. One woman stood out... she claimed she was about to lose her job, her car, her house and her significant other after being arrested for some minor something. I told her she hadn't even been charged, much less convicted, yet and that our reporter was simply listing the information on the police report. She kept threatening to sue the paper (OMG, like I've never heard that one before) and I asked her if she did it. With her best tone of righteous indignation, she proceeded on a 20-minute "well, yes, but, see, the devil MADE me do it" explanation for which it took every ounce of dignity I could muster not to burst out laughing over the phone.

It almost made the swimming parents' weekly rant seem tame by comparison and I was sort of glad my title wasn't city editor.

 

I loved the cops/courts beat.

I had a guy call telling me, "You done fucked me over! You put my name in the paper!"
"Uh, okay. I put a lot of names in my reports."

Turns out this guy testified at a preliminary hearing for a murder case I was following. Back to the action ...

"His family's gonna kill me! They know who I am! Why did you fuck me like this?"
"Well, first of all, his lawyer can find out your name, or anyone, really. This is all open, public record. Second, his family sat in court, not far from me, and watched you testify. They already knew you."

And the guy screams some more and hangs up. All he did was testify that he saw the now-convicted walking into the hotel with his now-dead ex-girlfriend. Hotel cameras had already established that, but whatever. It's not like he saw the guy pull the trigger or dump the body.

If only I could cover the beat again without the bullshit of a struggling newspaper ...