Dear dimwit on the phone

One time a guy called asking for the score of a basketball game which we didn't have, and when he asked why not I told him that it's probably because they didn't call in the results. The guy was surprised and outraged to discover that's how we got prep results for any event we didn't personally cover. He actually thought we sent people to every single event every day for all 100+ schools and now I've jaded him forever.

 

Are you sure that wasn't YankeeFan who called you?

 

I've had a fellow news reporter tell me that taking phone calls is the wrong way for us to work and we need to hire more part-timers or get high-school interns to cover all the games instead of having anyone in the office taking calls.
So, of course, it was election night this past Tuesday and I made sure to tell her that her and her ilk should be out pounding the pavement to get election results, not relying on web updates from the County Board of Voters. Then I ate her pizza! haha

 

Coupled in the wagering with the people who don't get what AP and other wire services do. Some think we've got someone at every MLB game for a one-graf story (well, as an AP member, technically, I do), or wonder it they'll pick up a story on fight night at the CYO gym, ect. Even had someone write a letter to the editor at one stop demanding the writer of an AP story be fired after a story about one of the pro teams we'd feature regularly.

 

Then there are the readers who insist on speaking with the reporter and don't understand that the AP writer doesn't work in our office.

 

Was it Mark Cuban?

I've taken calls from people demanding to speak with the reporter of another newspaper and they acted like I was nuts by telling them that reporter didn't work here. Then they demanded to speak to that reporter again.

 

I once took a call from someone complaining about the way I covered a game. I was having trouble understanding what she meant, so I picked up a copy of that day's paper and asked her if she had hers so I could look up what she was complaining about. I couldn't find what she was complaining about. I can't remember what prompted me to do it but I finally asked her if she could tell me who wrote it.

"(Sports Editor)," she says.

"You're not reading us. That's from the (Next County Over Gazette)."

<click>.

 

Then she asked you for his number, right?

Used to get that. People would get mad that I wouldn't give them the number to the competition.

 

Dear Division II women's basketball coach,
It IS news that two players are leaving your basketball program. If it's news when players join your team, it's news when they leave your .178 program.

 

This was relayed to me by one of my reporters:
He's at the office and gets a phone call from an irate father, claiming that he's been a subscriber for 40 years and how pitiful we are for not having a story about one of the local tennis teams. (His daughter plays for said high school team). My reporter let him go on and on for several minutes about how we're not doing our jobs, how much we suck and how he has to go to the competition for the information he wants. Once he's done, the reporter asks the guy to turn to page 8 (or whatever it was), which is where the tennis story was. There's a pause as the father can be heard rustling through his newspaper. Father comes back on the phone and says, "I owe you an apology."
Classic.

 

A caller tried to argue with me over a betting line he disagreed with, like somehow we were the ones who came up with them.