Dear dimwit on the phone

Points are deducted for the gross misspelling.

 

Dear frosh volleyball coach:
Thanks for sending your team photo and long story about the team winning a tournament over the weekend. No, we didn't run it on the front page, because we don't put team photos on the front page, except under the rarest of circumstances, and an early-season tournament ain't one of them. We also don't run extensive stories about JV teams, and we don't do much more with team pictures than basic cutline information. Yes. we're a local paper, but I've gotten more complaints about missing NFL and NASCAR stories and agate than I've ever gotten about freshman volleyball, which tells me more about what our readers want.

(So do I send a variation of this back to the coach, or let it go? I decided to let it stew for about 24 hours, and common sense is telling me to let it go).

 

Better to make the paper's policy clear than let it ride and give the impression that you're a dick.

 

Agreed.

 

I would respond but give a lot less information, which the coach could read as condescending toward her wonderful team. I would say that your paper has a policy that you don't run team photos and that you focus your high school coverage on varsity teams.

If the team's tournament success is worth a short story or note in your paper, you could explain that you will handle it that way.

And thank her for sending the information.

 

I always overelaborate here. Helps me blow off steam

And I've found starting every letter and reply to complainy phone calls with "thank you" helps disarm even the dimmest of dimwits, to borrow from the thread title. I think a lot folks in the town in question are still dealing with the closure of their weekly, which pretty much ran anything, since they didn't have a full-time sports staff and picked up a lot of our coverage.

 

Dear grandmother (I think...) of a forgotten Podunk player:

We're sorry your grandson's name didn't run with the team capsule in the fall sports tab. We, however, did not forget said player. His coach did when he sent us the information. But he's a four-year player, you say? Must have four years worth of splinters on his ass if the coach forgot about him.

Reprinting the team capsule for one omitted name is out of the question. We do it for you, we do it for everyone, and at that point we might as well just re-run the whole damn tab. Hell, the volleyball questionnaire I'm staring at right now is missing three players on the varsity roster.

I'm sorry that not reprinting a team capsule for your precious scrapbook "sure makes you want to keep getting the paper." Talk to the coach about it. Oh, you'll have him contact us, you say? Our part-timer played for him...we know for a fact he's not gonna care.

You want your grandson in the paper? Maybe he needs to try *harder* than everybody else, not just as hard.

Hugs and kisses,
Petrie

 

Dear dimwit receptionist/classified ad salesperson in my own office:

Today, you had the gall to tell me that getting the freshmen football results will "sell a paper" and that parents "cut things out and put them in scrapbooks for their kids." Really? holy shit! Thanks for telling me how to do my job.

Lady, I've been the sports editor for 14 years and the interim managing editor for 18 1/2 months. I've been trying to make sure that we can limp along and still present a good enough product to sell 2,000 goddamn papers every day for 18 1/2 fucking months. And you want me to break my ass for 50 cents? You're lucky I didn't call you out for your stupidity right there in front of the world. Get your ass back on the phone and cold call some people into buying subscriptions instead of one fucking paper a week for 6 weeks. Make us $90 instead of $3 and our publisher might even give you "a trophy ... or a pizza ... or a pizza trophy*." But don't you ever come into my office and tell me what to do ever again.

* - Quiz: Which Homestar Runner short is that line from?

 

Dear publisher,
I have some bad news. Our news department is totally screwed.
There is a reason why our competitors have become the local paper of record and it's because the news department is lacking - layout, stories, photos, you name it.
Worse news is our best editor - who puts together straight brilliant layouts and crushes the competition with her paper - is leaving in two weeks and we don't have anyone qualified to take over and continue where she left off.
Now here's a thought. Think about what sections you don't worry about. Got it?
Yep, it's sports. Our layouts our strong, our coverage is bar-none, we enjoy our jobs and we work our asses off so we don't get beat by the competition.
I understand you didn't look our way when you fired our major paper's editor. Too bad his replacement is overwhelmed and right now, is doing a worse job.
But with this new editor leaving, maybe instead of going to an outside hire, you'd at least think, 'Hey, sports guys, you fellas are doing a hell of a job, put together the best sections our paper has week in, week out; would you like to take over the news editor job for a substantial pay raise and significantly less work?'
I mean, I know we're the "toy department," but let's be honest - we're the only ones who work here who aren't a joke.

Sincerely,
Rhody

 

Bad idea. Every sports editor I have ever known who has moved to news side has hated it and wanted to come back to sports within 6 months.

Sports journalists are a rare breed. (One relative suggested we all must suffer from some form of mental illness, but I digress.) We work insane hours, work on our off days, travel insane distances to cover events that small numbers of people actually care about. But we know those who do care care passionately. I've become more and more convinced that you can't do this job if you're a clock puncher. Most news side and advertising people don't understand that. Fine. Let them do their work their way and stay out of our way and we'll get along fine.

Sports may be news, but news isn't sports.

(From someone who's done both).

 

Just got an email from a middle school softball coach who didn't like the headline I had for her 16-0 victory. Says she teaches her kids sportsmanship and doesn't want to demoralize the opposition.
Me: Look, lady, they're 80 miles away on bad country roads. They ain't reading this paper to find out about the asskicking they just took in middle school softball (stats and info are submitted by a parent. What? Like I'm going to a MS softball game? Not even with a damn gun to my head). They got their own rag for that.
She said the headlines have been changed from what the parent submits. I told her flatly that headlines must fit the space allotted and accurately and briefly describe the story below. And after writing 48 headlines a day (today was a 15 page edition of our biweekly), I won't spend an hour trying to write a more positive headline to fit in a single deck, 2 1/2 column wide space for middle school softball.
Thanks for reading.

What I really want to say is — you submit your MS softball games, I put out a paper. You don't submit your MS softball games, I put out a paper. I can live with you or without you, because I can find something to fill space and fill it well. That's not a problem.

 

What did the headline say? Because if it's anything other than "Local team tries hard" or "Local team suffers tough loss", she'd bitch. They always do.