Dear dimwit on the phone

How is it circular reasoning?

It's also funny that you say I'm bitching on a thread dedicated to bitching.

Welcome to the team.

 

This is the second year the commissioner has asked for us to cover this tournament. She was very respectful in the first email she sent last year, but she turned snarky (ha!) when I replied and respectfully told her we would not be covering it for the same reasons we won't this season -- we have a full plate of prep stuff going on and simply don't have the time to cover it.

She responded by saying we don't care about youth sports or the kids and parents. And that simply is not true. We run a youth page chock full of photos and results each Thursday, which her league used to be included in. I replied to her saying what we do for youth sports and say if she -- or anyone -- gets results to us, we'll run them in the paper.

But that wasn't good enough apparently, because that was the last I heard from her or the league -- till this week. She emailed my account and our general sports email Monday, and it seemed she was trying to be snarky again -- like she already knew what our answer would be.

I responded this time, saying the same thing I said last year: we'll run the scores, if they turn them in, but that's it. She hasn't emailed back yet.

 

Hang in there, KY. If you don't have the bodies to cover this event, it can't be done. It appears the folks you are dealing with have such a bad case of tunnel vision they can't see the big picture you're dealing with.

 

My theme for the past two weeks has been "Don't be That Dad." Apparently KYSportsWriter needs the amended version, "Don't be That Mom."

 

There are events that just can't be covered because they fall at the same time as other events worth covering. Doesn't mean they're not worthy of coverage. Just that there has to be priorities. If an event falls during a weekday during the summer, it may get covered, but if it falls on the day that several other things are happening, well, something has to give.

And if the woman is so concerned about coverage, then she should have been making a better effort all along to ensure coverage.

 

As a whole, I think the public has very little idea of what factors go into decisions involved in putting out a paper. Manpower, money, deadlines, etc. All they know is what they see (which is fine) and can't figure out the whys, so they automatically assume people at the paper are idiots and/or out to get them and their kids.

The idea of "we didn't staff Podunk's 55-0 blowout win on homecoming" was because (1) we had staffed them the past 3 weeks and will again next week, (2) we were down one staffer compared to the same time last year, (3) we expected the game to be a blowout and had two other really close games in the area that we staffed and (4) the game started so damn late and had a 45-minute halftime that we knew we'd struggle to get more than 10 inches before deadline anyway.

Of course, none of that matters to you. Better to think "those bullies at the paper have an axe to grind against Little Johnny Bedwetter, the third-string tailback and who scored the first (and quite possibly only) touchdown of his high school career."

 

You are absolutely correct about the public's perception on how a newspaper operates. I've found that people are relatively understanding when you explain it to them, though.

 

When I worked at my school paper we had a good hookup with the tennis team; a pair twins were the stars and were always open to helping us out so they got good coverage.

They graduated and once I became sports editor suddenly anyone involved with tennis wouldn't return anything. Coach wouldn't return calls or emails, and the players would not return messages via email or facebook either. So I said fuck it and dropped coverage.

Should the team have been covered: yes. However, if you're not willing to help us out even a little bit why should we cover you? Other less popular teams like softball and track were helpful, open to trying to new things, and amicable.

If you're not a team/event that moves the needle and we have space then it should be covered for sure. if the team/event expects special coverage during a packed time of year then fuck 'em.

 

Embarrassing.

 

I don't think that attitude is exclusive to the newspaper industry, though. If you go to a restaurant and get terrible service and terrible food, do you want to hear excuses about 3 people calling in sick, there's a new cook on duty, the food delivery truck was held up by a bad snowstorm, etc.? Same with when your cable goes out - you don't care about how they are working to find the problem, it's Thanksgiving and they are short-staffed, etc. Or the grocery store that just raised prices because their wholesale prices were just hiked up, and they can't have more than 2 checkstands open because revenue is down.

In any of those scenarios, do you (the customer) get mad, or do you sit and think about the reasons behind the problems and give them a break? I know many people's first inclination would be to vent at the nearest person they see, then never go there again, change to satellite, find another grocery store.

Why should newspapers (who need customers more than ever at this time) expect people to sit back and reasonably weigh all the factors that go into what makes them mad, then be understanding and rational?

 

No.

What's embarrassing is your holier-than-thou attitude you bring to every one of your posts in this thread.

Enough with the bullshit.

 

Here's the only caveat about this I would give - For an industry that is often about transparency and disseminating information, I have found that most publications heavily control the flow of information about their own organization. For example, I think most papers can probably be a bit more aggressive with running regular house ads explaining their submission policies for various sections. Right now, almost every paper does that for their editorial or letters page, but you might not see anything on the sports or calendar pages except the submission e-mail.

If someone is going on a short vacation and unavailable the next week, or even if they've left for a new position, I've never seen the harm in running something small about it. I know there is a mindset that's kind of like, "Who gives a shit?," but if you're at a weekly nowadays it is usually one staffer per town or section. My current position, I took over for someone else and the first two weeks were just consumed with "where did Joe Smith go?" questions.