Dear dimwit on the phone

My favorite was the time I got chewed out by a reader for not running anything on the World Series.

I told him to turn to Page 2. I heard the flap of the page turning. There were a few moments of silence before he railed into me for burying it on Page 2 (of a 6-8 page section). "Well, sir, they didn't actually play a game last night."

No, no, I take it back, my favorite was the time I got a call from a nice lady tearing into me for not publishing the time of the big game between State U and State Tech. I pulled out the previous three issues of the paper (so did she) and told her "Look at the top story on Page 1 for Monday. Now, look at the right-hand side of Page 2 on Tuesday. And, now look at the big story in the middle on Page 1 of today's section. There's the time and broadcast information."

I didn't even bother with the fact the TV listings for the week had ran all week

 

Agree with this, and also why I do think papers can be a bit more proactive with this stuff than they are. Like, in a slow news week, why not run an "explainer" article on... the newspaper process? At my college paper ages ago, we would run one at the start of each semester, and invariably we would also get a good response in terms of story idea submissions. There's no need to overdue it - like you don't need to run something like that once a month - but I do think that people in the newspaper industry take for granted how much people out of the industry understand.

 

No. No. No. Most readers don't care how it works. And the ones who do are the ones already writing in bitching about grammar usage.

 

I agree...they don't want the process explained necessarily. The ones who I find lobbying the most viral complaints are the people who expect us to be their personal public relations firm and that is in now way our job description.

 

This week's email, in the wake of the announcement of our all-area high schools soccer teams:

Mother of player questions why her son didn't make the team. The second paragraph starts, "I would never criticize a student-athlete," and then proceeds to question why we picked a certain kid because "he's not that good." The kid was one of her son's teammates.

 

Former SE, who recently became a father of a newborn: "When I become a little league parent, I promise I'm not going to act like a little league parent."

 

Much like the night someone called wondering why we didn't have a preview of the Podunk Tech game in that day's paper. Told them I knew it would be a heavy local day that day, so I ran it the day before. Silence.

 

Out of the hundreds of clueless phone calls I've taken over the years, one really stands out. It occurred on a night when our sports copy desk chief was off and I was filling in as the slot person. There were about six late stories coming in and our desk staffing was thin, as often was the case.

The guy on the line is asking a trivia question (don't remember what it was after all these years) with barroom noises in the background, so he obviously wanted to settle a bet. I explained, as politely as I could under the circumstances, that we were very busy and we just couldn't take the time to look up the answer.

We'd received this type of call many times, but his response was one in a million: "You're busy? Don't you guys just sit around watching sports all night?"

My blood pressure was already high enough before that call and it spiked so much during that exchange that it's probably a medical miracle that I didn't wind up in the hospital.

 

It's not just sports. I had to write an explainer story about the grand jury and how indictments work. Grand jury indicted a guy for murder, readers said 'how could that happen, he didn't even have a trial! The judge is railroading an innocent man!'

Well, no. Not how it works at all.

Anyway, the guy pleaded on a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, so he musta did that shit.

 

We had a guy promise that, and we covered a lot of Little League a decade later.

 

I got e-mailed compliments from Little League parents on both sides of the first game I covered this summer. I should quit while I'm ahead.

 

Yeah, Little League seems like a no-win situation. You can't really cover it like a serious reporter without risking the wrath of every parent in the community. ("No, it wasn't a home run. It was a fielder's choice and three throwing errors.")

Best bet seems to run a team photo of the league champions on the community page and try your darndest not to mix up any of the names in the cutline.