Dear dimwit on the phone

Wait, you're at an afternoon paper that prints at 6:15 a.m.? I've never known an afternoon paper to print earlier than 10:30 a.m. When does your's hit the streets?

 

One paper I used to work for did that. AM on the newsstand, home delivery by noon.

 

Sports prints at 6:15, news press run begins around 8. The press is at one of our weeklies (which also does commercial printing) is about 30-40 or so miles away. They try to hit the racks in time for lunch. Friday nights in the fall, I have to hand it over to pagination by 12:15 a.m. (news goes first on Fridays), and thank God for that, since it allows us to staff two games. Delivery time is 8 a.m., but readers don't seem to mind it being a little later since we can get more games in.

 

At both PM's I've worked at, sports has worked evening shift, since that's when most local games are. About the only time I miss being a true pm sports section is during events like the Olympics or World Cup, when they're in the right time zone that allows us to get an early game in. During the Beijing Olympics, the U.S. men's basketball team's games would start at 6 a.m. our time, and at that time sports would run around 7:45 a.m. or so (we printed onsite then), so I'd leave a hole on the front and ask dayside to fill it with the game, which I knew would move in time. Had an edition jump on our am competitors ...

 

The first call, I'll take three guesses as to which sport the caller's kid plays ...

Boys soccer
Girls soccer
Intramural soccer

 

That was something I didn't consider, that a lot of papers are printed off site. And considering mine is printed 20 miles away, I should have guessed. But when we were a PM, our weekday deadline was 10:30 a.m.

Last night, I filed from the office of the newspaper in the town the team I cover was playing. They will be sending their paper electronically to one 90 miles away beginning in two weeks. They're a very small daily (Kansas has a lot of those), something like 2,000 circulation. Their press is around 50 years old and it can't print in color. Their publisher wants to start using color because she feels selling color ads will bring in more revenue. Right now they can only do spot color because the press can't align four color right. I can understand that point of view because those reasons were similar to why our publisher decided to send our paper over to our sister paper to print. Ours wasn't as old but it couldn't do full color, either.

Because of the distance involved, all their deadlines have been moved up 3 hours on weekdays and more on the weekends. I think the next step for them will be to switch to mornings.

 

I'm more realistic ... outside of Wimbledon or an occasional coach firing, does anything really happen early in the morning in the sports world? Not really.

Got another one Friday, though. Girls golf coach e-mails us results of Thursday's league mini-tournament ... at 11 p.m.! Let's see, two-man department, both of us at football, all seven county schools in action, and you really expect us to stop everything just for your golf results that should have been sent in, if not the day before, at least that morning? Now it doesn't run until Monday, and when the parental units of Mollie Mashie call and wonder why we hate Podunk High golf so much that we held the results five days, I get to tell them the truth!

 

Eh, it's better for me in a way now that we're mornings. Before, I was coming back after the game and working past midnight on things then coming back in at 7 a.m. to get the things that other coaches didn't bother to send in until 8 or 9 or sometimes 9:45. So I was probably working 12 or 13 hour days and getting almost no sleep.

Now, I come in around 2, go cover what needs to be covered, get the paper out by 11, post to the web site another hour, go home, watch some SportsCenter or maybe the late night rebroadcast of shows on Discovery or Travel or History, go to bed around 2, get up at 10 and have a few hours to get some things done before I go to work.
I use my time a lot more efficiently now.

 

Phone rings Wednesday morning while I'm on deadline for our news section (editor on vacation, figured I'd pick up some OT).
Rhody: Sports, Rhody speaking.
Woman: Yeah, I'm looking at the paper and see a photo of a boys soccer game with Local High playing Local Private School and I read the story and it doesn't make sense because it doesn't mention Local High in the story.
Rhody: Well...wait, what (panic sets in because I think I put the wrong story in the spot).
Woman: Well, it just doesn't make sense. Why would you put a photo with Local High in the paper and not mention them.
Rhody: I'm looking at the photo right now. If you notice in the caption, it says File Photo, which means it's an older photo not from that game and in the caption it says Johnny Soccerman, right, shown in last week's game against Local High, which was a story we ran in last Friday's paper (NOTE: this paper is a bi-weekly).
Woman: Well I just think it's confusing. You should have ran a photo from the game between Sister Paper High and Local Private High.
Rhody: I would have loved to, but those photos don't exist. The photo caption clearly reads file and says that it was from last week's game and ...
Woman: No, I'm just voicing my concern as a consumer and think it's confusing. Bye.
Hangs up.
Rhody: (slaps head).

 

I get a lot of calls from folks who ask pretty good questions but don't leave call-back numbers. Maybe it's cellphone culture, everybody just assumes you have a way of knowing how to call them back.

 

"Sports, this is HanSen"
"How come you didn't mention my son's five goals in the game yesterday?"
"I did. I'm looking at it right now, on the continuation of the story" (some days, better not to use technical terms like "jump.")
"Oh, there it is. I must have read right past it. Tthanks for mentioning it."

Do the words "sorry about that" not exist in readers' vocabularies.?

 

I wish I had time to read this entire thread - just saw it now.

I had one yesterday - some hotshot lawyer from the Big City.

He calls to let me know his client was acquitted earlier in the day in a jury trial (several reasons why I didn't cover the trial which I won't get into here.)

As he's telling me this, he is eating an apple.

"This *crunch-slurp-crunch* is *crunch-slurp-crunch* HotShot Lawyer *crunch-slurp-crunch* ..."

The entire conversation. By the time I hung up, I wanted to take that apple and shove it up his nose!