Dear dimwit on the phone

My sister worked there for about a year, and I've also had one in town for 3 years at various reporting stops. The police reports are all over the map, from kids fucking around to desperate people just trying to shoplift food to "mastermind" criminals. The most popular shoplifting technique now seems to be loading up baby carrier boxes or backpacks with other items, and then going through checkout.

 

We don't have room to run them. Back when we had 10-12 pages per day, we did. When we dropped to eight-10, we cut back. When we hit six pages daily, we cut them completely.

And if you're getting 100 and running three per week, are you running them into the summer?

 

Sadly, nothing new about "boosting". A lot of times, they'll turn around and try to sell this stuff. Unbelievable.

I will give some leeway to a hungry, homeless person who hasn't eaten in a week trying to get a loaf of bread or a bag of chips. But some of this stuff just makes me roll my eyes.

 

Might have overestimated. It feels like 100. We try to average three per week, but it depends on space. Sometimes it's four or five, sometimes it's only one or two. Point is, it's a steady stream of them coming in, at least a few per week and enough that we're often backed up pretty good by mid-December.
Sounds like you're at a bigger paper, and this is definitely something that's more in a smaller community paper's wheelhouse, but you have six pages per day and can't carve out space for something like this? We typically have three and find room to do it. The pictures usually run as one- or two-column shots and take up about the same amount of space as a regular story would. I'd much rather run those than some throwaway NBA or Top 25 college basketball roundup.

 

At many of the papers I've seen, this would have gone over incredibly well.

 

We don't get that many. Not even close. And we have a 30-day rule in place for photos and results, and we're not breaking that rule to run someone's dead deer photo from November in the summer.

We used to get anywhere from 20-30 photos each deer season, and we'd run them -- as space permitted, obviously -- each week. But now, that number has dropped to 10-15 a season. Maybe it's because social media and all that jazz ... I really don't know what to chalk it up to, but folks haven't been turning those photos in like they used to.

 

People pay for obits in your papers, right? Charge them for running the deer pix, budget it as advertising space.
Every time you get eight (or 12, whatever) then run a full page of them.

 

Dear guy 5 states over than keeps calling us all night for an update to your alma mater's football score:
How many times do we have to tell you we don't give partial scores over the phone?
...
No, sir, we never give out scores.
...
I understand you don't get our paper sir (so thanks for being a loyal subscriber), but we have a website that will be updated after the game.
...
It's good to know you want free up-to-date info from a place that charges for it's product.
...
*click*
Well, then...dial 1-800-382-5633 for more information...that's 1-800-FUCK-OFF.

 

There's some guy who lives a couple states away and keeps calling us to find out scores of his beloved college because apparently he can't get any information whatsoever about a major Division I university where he lives, and he has to keep mentioning that every time he calls. Football, basketball, baseball, softball -- he'll call about all of them.

Recently he called to complain about Podunk Tech A&M's football loss and just went nuts about what he thinks should happen to the coach. I told him I was on a deadline and trying to put the paper out, and his response was, "I know." Then he promptly proceeded to rant for a few more minutes.

I didn't listen to a word he said.

 

That's a damn good idea. Why do we give away stuff that people will actually pay for?

 

What a way to start a Monday. Water polo dad whose spawn didn't make all-league, even as honorable mention, sends me a spreadsheet with his son's stats to make sure I'm "not deceived" by the coaches vote and will consider him for all-county, if not MVP.

An MVP? On a team that went 0-12 in league? He may make the team, but his stats are average at best.

 

We had a parent once send us a full press kit on his basketball-playing son, complete with such tidbits as his name should always be listed as Rodney, never Rod. He also listed the kid's top 5 college choices, which included 5 D-1 schools and the local D-3 as his "safety" school. The kid was a decent player and wound up as his school's all-time leading scorer (for a very young school), but the treat was when we brought his name up to the D3 coach. His response:"He can't even play at our level."