Dear dimwit on the phone

Or as I like to tell 'em, my checks say "Podunk Town Tattler," not "NBC Sports." I'm here to put stories in the paper, not kiss NBC's keister.

 

Dear Retard,

What he said, too, times 10,000.

Up yours, red-hot poker, 50 pounds of shattered glass, etc etc etc.

Love

 

Dear basketball mother,

It sucks that your state-ranked team lost in the second round of the tournament. Don't e-mail me 30 minutes after the game telling me how I should write my story on it and to then tell me to make sure to mention how proud the parents are of all the seniors and how they "NEVER GAVE UP"

 

I'm just going to make a blanket statement here.

Dear parents of all athletes,

Please know that we are a newspaper and, as such, we don't care that your kids tried hard, never gave up, practiced hard, are friends on and off the field, do what their coaches say, sacrifice so much, and/or are having fun.

In fact, we don't give a shit about your kids period. To us, your kid is nothing special. In fact, in three weeks we'll likely forget your kid even exists.

No matter how good your child may be, rest assured that we've seen someone, or covered someone, better than him or her and, regardless of what you may think, little Johnny or Sue's accomplishments, at the end of the day, don't mean dick to us.

So, please, from now on, recognize that to us, this is a job and your kid is just a part of that job. We do want to put out a good product, and to do that, it will require us to be familiar with just about every local athlete worth a damn but don't mistake this for us having an interest, beyond strictly selfish, in how far your child's team goes and/or how many trophies he/she wins.

As such, just let us do our jobs. Give us the basic information when we need it, nothing more, nothing less and you'll get all the clips you'll ever need for buttering up D-I coaches who are even less impressed with your kid than we are and/or scrap-booking for down the line when your little angel has grown up and started doing drugs and having unprotected sex and you need something to remind you of the good ol' days.

So, in closing, remember this: We don't give a fuck.

Peace and Love,

Every journalist ever.

 

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

We don't pick the all-league team. The coaches do that. And, no, we weren't surprised and stunned that your son was not named to the the team, even as honorable mention.

Your son only became eligible at the start of the second semester, he only played six games, didn't start and averaged six points. So while we aren't surprised he didn't make all-league, we also would have a hard time considering him as the greatest player the league has ever seen.

Bud

 

You are just so wrong.

 

Hey, folks!

You make your living with words.

If you eliminate one offensive word -- retard -- from your vocabulary, you're still gonna have plenty of other words left.

 

Dear parents,

Don't come up to me after a game where home team lost and TELL me that I NEED to write about sucky officiating. There was nothing wrong with the officiating in that game, and I will not bow to your commands at the point of a bayonet.

That is all.

 

That's retarded.

 

This.

And constant verbal abuse will not make him/her any better. Most of them are teachers, or insurance salesmen, or in other words, people just like you who love the game and are just trying to pick up a few extra bucks. Plus, unlike you, they have the courage to put on the striped shirt and grab the whistle 4-5 times a week, or more. They're not NBA or college refs, they're high school refs, much like your kid isn't the second coming of Michael Jordan or Lisa Leslie, no matter how much you want it to be true. So on a night when your team can't handle Podunk High's press, turns it over 40 times and loses by about 50 (and after the mercy rule kicks in, who really cares except me?) in regionals, it's not the ref's fault, sometimes it's a case of Podunk being better than your beloved Smalltown Tech.

 

Dear local college sports information person:

Thanks for e-mailing us Sunday evening to encourage us to take great care in getting the conference championship swimming results right, since there were mistakes in the paper from the previous day's events. It would have been nice, however, if you would have pointed out what the mistakes were so we could correct them.

And the swimming results you sent us at 10 p.m. on a Sunday (many hours after they ended)? Well, you don't have to worry about checking for mistakes with those, because you sent them too late to make today's paper.

 

Dear Corporate (insert insulting name here)

You keep laying people off and cutting our newshole. Yet, somehow it's our fault that our circulation is down, which are bringing advertising revenues down as well.

When we ask you what you expect from us, you don't have any rational ideas, besides the latest gimmick that everyone will forget about six months later. And your sole advice to us is to "Do more with less."

Well gee, no shit Sherlock. That's what we've been doing. You give us dirty looks when we mention overtime pay. And while you've been counting your bonus money, we were told we couldn't send a reporter to a huge game 30 miles away because our travel budget was too much. Congrats, you've just put an extra $5.70 in your pocket. Yeah, that's right. You haven't raised the gas mileage rate since it was $1.48 per gallon. It's been stuck at 19 cents per mile for five years. And if you don't believe me, then why don't you get out of your office and go check our reporters' odometers in their cars.

Sincerely,

Tired, overworked and impovershed journalist