Dear dimwit on the phone

Almost forgot what it was like to get a dimwit moment, it's been so long...

I sent out some tweets recently about a local school with a number of close playoff games this year. Football advanced to state after a 4th and goal stand with 0.5 seconds left. Basketball was in the well-publicized 5 OT game. Hockey lost on a goal scored with 1.8 seconds left. Baseball lost on a walk-off error.

Here's a response I got: "When it comes to baseball or hockey, I think you missed the whole thing. Just stick to your basketball. Baseball is like church, someone once said, many attend few understand..."

What did I miss? What did I not understand?

 

6½ years of dimwits and I still look forward to every post.

 

I hate parents. Ones who complain about poor coverage of their team actually make me want to cover said team even less. I was planning a featurette this summer which included a kid whose parent made the comment above. I'm almost considering scrapping the idea all together. If he wants me to stick to basketball, I'll stick to basketball.

 

Dear Future Dimwits? Well, anyway....

We're going to be moving in late June to a different building downtown. When we moved one door over 10 years ago, we had people asking us when and why we moved to the neighboring town the company is based out of even though we put in a story explaining the move and how we were not moving to the next town over.

So when we move one block over in late June, we're expecting a lot of calls asking us why we moved to the neighboring town. Even though we're going to run a story explaining the move and how we're not moving to the next town over.

 

Do city lines run right through your building/block?

 

I worked for the Podunk Press and we moved three miles to the north to Podunkville, which we also covered.
We kept the Podunk Press name and both cities flipped their shit, even though they are basically one community.

 

No. People here have an inferiority complex about the next town over ("Podunk City"), which is in another state. What I mean is that when we got bought by the company that owns our sister paper in Podunk City, people immediately assumed we were going to move our offices over there. Then when me moved into the building next door to us, people assumed we moved our offices to Podunk City. And we just know that this time around, even though we're moving one half-block to the east and one block to the north, and we're putting in a story and house ads explaining that we're moving less than a half mile people are still going to call and ask us why we moved to Podunk City. ("How come you still have a phone number with a 620 area code?" Because we didn't move to Missouri!)

These same people think we own Topix and call us demanding to remove demeaning posts. We even wrote a story explaining how we have nothing to do with Topix and the people we contacted at Topix give no shits about what's posted there.

 

This was what a high school parent said to me the other day, when I pointed out something to counter his argument that we were biased against his son's high school. "You chose to get into this profession. Now you're going to sit there and listen to what I have to say." His other best line was that I needed to go to my publisher and tell him that I need a bigger budget to hire more people.

 

I hope you didn't.

 

Is this the proper thread to preemptively gripe about the inevitable calls I'm going to get about the Athletes of the Year choices I've puzzled over all weekend?

 

*As background I cover four schools and do male and female athletes of the year for all four schools. I used to only have two schools to cover but now have four because of paper consolidations this year*

Dear Parent,
Why was my Athlete of the Year different than the school's? Because I didn't know the school chose its own! Yes your kid got the school's nod but the school didn't tell me it was doing its own award. Had I known, I might have considered their choice because I'd rather put the blame on the school than get crap for my choice. That said, I think my choice, of a kid who had six section finals appearances in two sports and two state finals appearances in two sports puts him ahead of your kid who played one sport, was named to the second team all league twice while he had teammates ahead of him with better resumes. And I didn't choose them either. Yes your kid's team went to the playoffs four straight times he was there, but they won one game. Still not better than the kid I chose.

 

We're moving today. We have a sign on the door that says the office is closed. We put notices in the paper that we're closed today. The office door is only open so we can move things out. The main office is empty and the lights are turned off. So please, continue to come in the door and expect to get something done. Especially if it involves a need to make change since the cash register isn't here or a debit card because the card reader isn't here.

Our dimwits are special. They don't need phones.

(And it's probably a good thing the office is closed. The part-time reporter we've hired is currently on an anti-gay, it's-a-sickness-not-a-choice, next-thing-you-know-bestiality-will-be-legal rant.)