Dear dimwit on the phone

Just to ease any confusion: Yes, it's a school hall of fame.

Elementary school state tournament? Yes, they've got to send you something for that!

 

Did you throw up in your mouth when she trotted out the trying hard bit?

 

When I was on the news side of things, about once every month or two, I got a call about some scandal (usually from someone who looks like they've done their fair share of meth) involving a stolen car/custody dispute/etc. that "the police aren't doing anything about." So they call me, but don't want to answer questions when I ask for more information and get mad when they say there's nothing I can do. Really?

 

Got this constantly. After five minutes of digging, you'd find out there was something more to the story, like them being behind on 43 child support payments or having 10 suspended license arrests.

 

There would be no way for me to know through website hits. Our system isn't smart enough to break things down that way (We're a very small daily).

Here's what I know: It used to be that I'd get 5 or 6 calls each time I omitted either JV or freshmen from the end of the varsity story.

This year: One call all year for freshmen. No calls for JV.

People know there's less space in the paper now. We're 2 inches narrower and 1 inch shorter than we were two years ago. I tell people, it's basically the equivalent of losing space for 1 to 2 stories (22-26 inches). I seldom used to ask for two pages. Now I ask for two pages at least three days a week and for three pages for the weekend edition. And I still don't have room for freshmen and JV because they're putting the same number of ads in less space, so a second page isn't really giving me that much more space.

We also switched from an afternoon paper with a 1:30 p.m. deadline to one with a 10:30 a.m. deadline and then became an all-mail-delivery paper with an 11 p.m. deadline. Last Friday, I got back from the gym at 10 and had to write a boys and girls story, edit the pix, lay them out and sum up a rural basketball doubleheader in an hour. No, I didn't make deadline.

No space. No time. That's what it's come to. And I like to remind myself that when we switched to mornings, our publisher told people it would make the sports coverage better because people would be reading about the game at 7 a.m. instead of 5 p.m. Except it doesn't make it better because I'm more rushed and how many people actually get their mail at 7 a.m.? Mine never arrives before noon.

 

No ... but this woman impresses me as the type who whines because the sun rose in the east yet again. If form follows, we'll get the biographical information late in the week, when we'll be knee-deep in hoops playoffs, and it may not get as much play. as earlier in the week. And of course it's all our fault.

 

Got that call once in my first life as a sporto. There was nobody on the news side, so I offered to get their name and number and someone would get back to them, they said they didn't want to get involved ...

 

At my shop, we basically run an ad from the police department that lists six people who are wanted for various petty crimes -- usually drug offenses, failure to appear, driving on a suspended license and the like. I get a call from this lady who is pretty miffed. She can't believe that we're running her name. We cost her a job, her kids and about a 1,000 other sob story bs. She demands to know where we get the information. The police department, I tell her. Every thing we get is from the police. Well she wants a retraction and a formal apology form the paper. She even has some dude in the background demanding an apology. Ma'am, I tell her, any corrections have to come from the police, I suggest you go down to the police department and clear it up with them. (Yes, I'm hoping she's stupid enough to listen to me and is arrested when she goes to the PD). Well she rants a bit more for a correction and I keep telling her that she won't get one without the police sending us something.
So she finally hangs up and now I'm curious who this lady is. I open the paper to the most wanted section and the only two women in there were both listed as arrested. Which begs the question, what the hell was she complaining about? Lady, if you don't want to appear in my newspaper under the most wanted, stop doing stupid crap that gets you in trouble with the police!

 

"STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE!"

 

Dear clueless lady who lies about how much you read our paper,

You send us an e-mail saying "Wouldn't it be great if you guys ran basketball standings every week? You could run all of your classes for both boys and girls. I've checked your paper and your website, and I don't see them anywhere. That would make so many people happy and at the same time, add readers and improve traffic on your website!"

Thanks lady. We run full basketball standings once a week. I know this because I usually have to do them on my day off and we cover more than half the regions in the state, so in order to keep up, I have to dedicate an hour each night to updating them. If you'd like to check any Thursday paper over the last two months or our high school scoreboard on our website for the past two months, you can see all the basketball standings you want.

Please don't check our paper on a Sunday/Monday, take a quick glance at our website snd say "Whelp, guess they're not here!"

Insincerely,

Peacer84

 

Also,

Dear year-round golf fan.

I understand you only care about the PGA tour, and it's something you live your life by. But when we can barely squeeze local stories into our paper, we're not making room for a 20-inch story on Tiger-less PGA golf in February.

So, the next time you choose to write an e-mail with the words "You're PGA coverage is worthy of a quadruple bogey," please remember it's February, so you can save your horrible golf metaphors for your senior citizen pals when you meet for 5 a.m. coffee at Hardees.

Appreciate it.

 

*instantly jealous you have a Hardees*