What was your most recent chiding?

One of my co-workers (in the business side) just chided me for "slighting" the 12-and-under softball team her daughter plays on in favor of the boys.

I threw several points at her:
1.) They were out of town. The boys teams were playing in our city.
2.) No one sent in any results. The only time I've got results was when they went to a local softball tournament, which I made sure I got in the paper for several days.

I understand your kids are important to you, but give me a break. I hear about this via email and those "drive-by-shooting" voicemails (just a whine and never leave a phone number), but I really don't need to hear about from people who work here.

 

Had that.
Also had a facebook group (with almost a 1,000 members) devoted to the hatred of me. Even better.

 

Had this happen to me before, but it was about covering middle school girls basketball. The reason I didn't get over there enough was that a) The boys and girls teams played on opposite ends of town and I had to make a choice. b) The 8th-grade boys were undefeated and were really good. Well, for a middle school team they were good. c) The boys coach went out of his way to be helpful to me in this painstaking task, even calling in his out-of-town games while the girls coach would disappear when the game was over (She was the "Just put something in there and make me sound good" kind of cocah.". I would even try to go across town once or twice to get the results of one game and then get back for the others, but that was just not enough, the parents wanted to see the shitty pictures I took of their kid in the paper (see a thread about me a LONG time ago for further details about that).
I eventually had to stop coming into the office early due to all the damn phone calls, I just covered my event and get the paper out.
That led to everyone else in the office saying that I didn't do any work because I didn't come in at 8 a.m. when they all knew I stayed until 1 a.m. to put the paper to bed. Almost cost me my marriage in the process.
I won't be the SE at a tiny daily again... Believe me.

Wow, that was healthy, thanks for listening.

 

IMO, one of the worst sins of any employee at a paper is to approach one of the editors and bust their chops about coverage about something in the paper, especially when said employee is personally involved and especially if it's on company time. The people on the editorial staff get enough guff from readers/callers without dealing from someone on the inside.

I live with my dad right now, and my sister and her family are next door. We subscribe to the papers I work on, and my dad and the brother-in-law read it. They would always drop comments and suggestions, especially about the coverage of the two local high schools (of course the one nearest us was being shortchanged  :), and were expressing their thoughts like I was going to go right to the sports editor at work and relay their feelings. I finally told them in no uncertain terms that if they felt so strongly about it, they could call the editor themselves or write a letter. My closing statement essentially said "I'm not your damn messenger boy."

 

We made that choice here. You can do local and do it well, or you can go to wire copy and try to compete with everyone else for the same market. We chose to do local and we never looked back.