Dear dimwit on the phone

Fuck 'em. You did nothing wrong and did everything the way you should have.

Echoing FNF - it will blow over and be forgotten very soon.

 

We're not the only game in town, unfortunately. The competition is a website run by an ambulance-chasing hack who has gained lots of traction by working the police beat in the wee hours of the morning, and doing Facebook Live videos of every wreck and fire. He's apparently developed a teleportation device that allows him to beat the police and fire department to the scene, even when the scene is out in the middle of nowhere and it's impossible to get there in less than 20 minutes.

This morning their sports guy wrote what I presume is supposed to be a column in support of the guy. That's fine. He's done enough good in our community that he can be forgiven for what is hopefully a one-time mistake like this. But it was obviously written in response to the negative reaction our story is getting on social media, which chaps my ass. They get to avoid reporting the news and come off looking like the heroes and us the evil villains.
To further pander, they've changed the profile photo on their Facebook page to one of him.
Fuck. Those. Guys. With so many two-foot long spiked dildos.

 

Do we need a "Dear dimwit in the Facebook comments" thread at some point?

 

That movie was what I automatically thought of.

 

How does one write a column in support of a drunk driver? Attack the field sobriety test?

Its not as if your story was “against” the guy, it was just the facts ma’am. People are morons.

 

Their column, which literally had the headline of "We love you, Local Hero," was trying to show support for the guy in a difficult time. It wasn't a bad premise. This guy really has done a lot of charity work in our town and is very proud to be from here. He's been very generous and treated people well with both his time and money. Honestly, if things hadn't gone the way they had this week and I didn't feel the need to defend the honor of both my paper and myself, I might have written something similar.
Even in the follow-up column I did write, I pointed out that he's (hopefully) a good guy who made a mistake. I linked to 50 stories we've written about him, all of them positive — because there literally was not a negative one in the 100+ stories we've written.
I don't want to bash the guy and I certainly don't wish ill will on him.

My problem with the competition's story wasn't that they wrote it, or even the tone of it. It's that they never once said why they wrote it. There wasn't a single reference, not even in passing, about the DUI. There wasn't a separate story reporting the basic facts like we did, with the column as a companion piece. It was obvious they saw how people were reacting to our story, decided, "Oh we want no part of that," and took the coward's way out. Sticking it to us was a bonus.
They even made a reference to "social media negativity" being directed toward the guy, when all of the negativity was being directed at us.
I ran into their sports guy at a couple of assignments yesterday and it took a lot of effort not to light into him and call him and his boss cowards. I already had no respect for their shitty operation. Whatever little shred of respect I had for them even as individuals is gone as well.

 

I guess if there is one good thing about all of this, it's that I seem to have pissed off the half of the town that doesn't read the paper anyway. As far as I know we haven't had any canceled subscriptions. Not even any angry phone calls or emails. Just the Facebook comments. So I suppose that's good.
In fact, one of my favorite comments (well, besides the two or three people who said, "I drive drunk all the time and you ain't reporting on me!") was, "If I subscribed to the Podunk Gazette I'd cancel my subscription."

 

Ever have a reader complain about the lack of coverage of their sport by bashing another sport that has coverage? Not even coverage, sometimes they lose their mind over the TV schedule. The sport you're attacking is listed because it's on Fox Sports 1. Your sport is streaming only and not even local.

 

Constantly came up at the preps level, football vs. everything else. Mostly along the lines of "the football team is 3-5, how come you cover all their games when D-III soccer is 10-0?" Well, people still wanted to read about football more.

 

But don't you understand it's the fastest growing sport in the world?

Seriously, I wouldn't even want to think about doing lisrimgs nowadays with as much as is on streaming.

 

Same here, pal. I hate those fucking lisrimgs.

Everyone else hates those fucking lisrimgs, too!

LISRIMGS ARE UNAMERICAN!!1!!11!!!!