Dear dimwit on the phone

This wouldn't happen to be the Ten-Star All-Star Basketball Camp, would it? Everyone in my office, even people who don't care about sports, know to either hang up on them or throw the fax in the trash.

Michael Jordan and Vince Carter did not attend the camp you hold in Atchison, Kansas, people. Stop trying to make it sound like they did.

 

That's the one. Haven't gotten anything from them this year. Hope they've gotten the hint.

 

Dear local news contributor who means well but doesn't know it's no longer 1987:

While our newspaper has a policy for accepting faxes as submissions, please note that I and my coworker will painstakingly go out of our way not to include your 45 pages of Little League Results, announcement about a summer rec league and/or general tomfoolery on account of the fact that you are using an outdated piece of technology that not only makes our job hard by forcing us to type up your useless crap, it makes our job impossible because your handwriting is about as legible as upside down Latin scrawled on the inside of a 35-foot Oak tree.

Please feel free to contribute your stories and information. Just know that it's called email and it's not a new concept. In fact, I can clearly see that several of the releases you've sent us were typed up. Take the time to email us and, maybe, just maybe, it will make it to our pages.

 

Oh, and one more...

Dear PR Hack,

Please stop emailing me news about your community college's women's basketball team when A.) We have no local players on your team, B.) Have not had any locals in your athletic department since Clinton's first term and C.) Don't have a single reader in our entire coverage area that gives a shit.

Sincerely yours,

Guy who wants to shit in your mouth.

 

Dear company who owns the rights to useless, Sharper Image-reject inventions,

Stop sending the entire newsroom daily e-mails suggesting a story about how your solar-powered melon baller can spice up a couple's love life this Valentine's Day. Or how your celebrity-shaped cookie cutters are making Christmas baking fun again. Or how your USB-powered back massager makes a great gift for Boxing Day.

Has anyone at any paper ever, in the history of the printed word, written a story based on one of these e-mails? I should start replying, saying I'd like some more info and a few quotes for a Sunday centerpiece. Then when they call me I'll do that thing Pee Wee Herman did to Dottie when he was like "I can't hear you... SHHHHHHHH... I think.... SHHHHHH... we have a... SHHHHHHH... bad connection!" just so I can hear the soul leave their body when they realize the only successful story plant of their career was just a big Pee Wee Herman joke.

 

Dear Senior Shuffleboarders:
We know you've been playing shuffleboard every Wednesday at the Wesleyan Church since Christ was a cowboy -- or you all were young. We know the same eight people win every fucking week. How often do you people need to see your name in the paper? Isn't the type too small yet?
Please, please stop.
Ditto you 60 year old oldtimer hockey players who call and report your goal and assist against the other team of old goats. Nobody gives a damn.

 

click

 

Speaking as the interim managing editor that I've been since last February, it's so much worse on the news side.

We're an itty-bitty daily (about 2,200 circ....yes, I said daily). And we get "area news" from "area correspondents."

Meaning we get gossip columns from old ladies.

Actually, we're down to three such columns. The other old ladies stopped writing or passed on and no one wanted to take up their mantles. Thank God. The three who remain can't get many people to talk about their dinners with their families with them or their trips to Tulsa or Kansas City, so these remaining columns are essentially weekly newsletters focusing on their families or close friends.

One of these columns last week was nothing but the author's dinner guests for the week before. And this woman capitalizes every noun ("Shirley Buttfuck sat down with the Assmasters at their House and ate a nice Dinner of Turkey, Green Beans, and Lime Sherbert. She dropped her Fork on the Floor and everyone had a good Laugh.")

And, no, we can't stop running them because that's "community journalism."

 

I read your pain, apeman. Worked for a paper who took that crap and published it not only it was labeled local and "community journalism," but also because they weren't paid for it. Nothing like useless space kill.

 

I've had their Sherbert. It's nothing to write home about.

 

I'm a nice Sherbert. You're a hockeypuck...

 

Dear old fart and graduate of State U which is nearly 100 miles away:

Quit bitching to me because I am the beat writer of Hometown College, which is 20 minutes away from the paper. We don't cover State U, we cover HC.
No, I didn't go to HC, I am just paid to care about what goes on at HC...not State U.
Yes, I understand there are a lot of State U fans in the area, and we will run AP on every bball game they play. If they don't start until 9 p.m. though, we won't get the story in because we have a deadline.
No, I won't do a poll to see who is more liked in the area, it's my ME and Publisher's idea for us to cover Hometown College and not State U. It's called a local newspaper for a reason, we cover the local stuff...not State U.

Thanks for the ideas, we appreciate all of our readership *rolls eyes*