Why I drink ... phone calls.

Not entirely up to the thread title, but I talked to a guy the other day who got all upset that we were no longer running NHL boxscores. There's no way in the world my place would ever run NHL boxscores, and being out in the field means that I'm not the one who's going to be able to do anything about it anytime soon.

This guy continued on and on, though, and pulled out a copy of the paper. "See how large this photo is? You could run a smaller photo and use some of that space for the boxscores. Or all this coverage of [state U]? You could scale back on some of this stuff. I mean, football isn't even in season, and it's coming up on the NHL playoffs!"

I finally said to the guy, "Look, we can run a whole damn special section on the NHL every single day if we chose to. But we choose not to. We make editorial decisions based upon what we have available. And while I'm not entirely sure, I've got to be pretty close to correct when I say you're the only person who has mentioned, in the past six years, that we no longer run NHL boxscores."

Oh, very well then, he said, and scuttled away.

 

Zebra, just out of curiosity, I take it your paper doesn't run a B2 or B4 (or whatever B) page strictly filled with boxes/rankings/agate bulls***?

ps. It's a perfect example for the thread title. Unless, of course, you don't drink.

 

Better yet, SATURDAY games, played at 2 p.m., sometimes 1 p.m... hell, sometimes 11 a.m.

 

A couple of these stories reminds me of one from years back when I was the the one-man sports staff.

A guy calls up the publisher and talks to both him and my editor about coming in to the office to do some research for some project he was working on. He wanted to use our microfilm library. Sounds nice and all, but the bosses wanted me to help him. Which wouldn't have been too much of a problem except A. I was in the middle of state basketball playoff week, which meant I was already putting in about 60 hours (some of which was unpaid because they didn't consider driving time to count as work, blah, blah) B. The guy wanted to come in during the late morning, after I had already finished the a.m. part of my split shift for the afternoon paper. In other words, he was going to be cutting into my breakfast/nap time after getting in there at 6 a.m.And C. They wanted me to hang around for the 3 or 4 hours to supervise the guy. Like I had nothing better to do with my (unpaid) time.

And that's not counting the other issues. 1. We had no librarian, and our microfilm rolls were thrown about in filing cabinets randomly. 2. The guy had only a vague idea of when the stuff he was wanting to look up actually ran. He wanted to look up every edition for the 1970s. This, needless to say, would have taken us all week. 3. Our microfilm machine sucked donkey balls. It was hard to put in the film, and it only had two speeds: Superfast or Snail. And Superfast made me dizzy and sick to my stomach to watch.

So the guy comes in, editor tells me to help him. Guy rambles off about what he wants. I show him the filing cabinets full of tossed around rolls. He picks one. I set it up for him. Then he looks at me.

"Aren't you going to go through the film?"

He wanted me to do his fucking research for him.

That's when I politely told him that I didn't have time for this, that I had a state playoff game to cover an hour's drive away in a few hours, and that the local public library would be a better place for him to do his research.

Guy leaves pissed off. Day later, my editor comes up to me and asks why I didn't help the guy. I told him that the guy wanted me to do his work for him, and frankly, I really didn't have the time.

 

Fortunately for us (at least in this regard), our archives sucked donkey balls until the time we were purchased by (this company) in 2005. So no one's going to come down on me for refusing to help someone to do research because we legitimately can't help them.

Someone asked the other day if I could look up stats from the 1960's. I told him that no stats of any sport by any team exist prior to when I arrived here in 1996. Then I gave him the phone number of the library and told him to ask them how far their microfilm of our papers go back.

The guy before me was here 20 years and he kept track of everything. For some reason, he took it all with him when he left.

 

I may have told this one before. Didn't happen to me, but I overheard it. Was working at a suburban paper at the time...the "urban" has a big metro daily.

Sports: Sports.
Caller: I liked your preview of the upcoming high school football season.
Sports: Thanks!
Caller: Got one question. Why didn't you cover Podunk High?
Sports: We did. It's in there, on Page (whatever).
Caller: I know, but it's not in Big Metro Daily.
Sports: We aren't Big Metro Daily.
Caller: Yeah, but you're all run by the media.

 

I love when a certain geezer asks if we have the score from Big-Time College, when it's on:
1. TV
2. the radio
3. Gamecast on the interwebs
4. Semaphore
5. Smoke signals
6. Morse code
7. the pyre warning system from Lord of the Rings

Like all I have to do on a Saturday is give you that damned score, when the game is in progress. Screw you!

 

E-mailer: I think you're missing out on covering Podunk High tennis...no stories over the last two weeks.

Response: The teams have been rained out over that span. There have been no matches to cover.


*Of course, I suppose I could send a reporter out to see what the players are having for breakfast?

 

After a week of canceled games due to rain, they've all been getting made up this week. 30+ call-ins/writeups, plus our regular beat stuff, and the obvious (briefs, etc) -- just a pair of us a night doing it.

Last night, we got so much stuff that we had to use up nearly our entire B2 agate page. MLB standings were left out, just a few boxes. Standings should have been in over boxes, but the person doing the pages (and taking calls) threw it together last second and fit in what was sitting in the page basket on deadline.

We've gotten at least a dozen calls/messages today. We tell them we can't leave out local sports for national. Not to mention, the higher-ups are pushing local or bust.

"I just don't understand," say the callers... After 10 minutes of rambling. We explain. "I just don't understand," repeat the callers.

 

Your callers are right to bitch. Trim the prep roundup, get in the MLB standings.

 

We recognized that the standings should have been in over a couple boxes, but it was one night since I can ever remember here (which is obviously why it was noted). The irritating part is that most of these calls spiraled into complaining that we don't play up more national stories, saying no one cares about things like our local college teams.

The people over our heads demand full local B1's unless it's something big nationally -- a change installed last fall. Not something we're in love with, but it's what we're told.

When we explain that we are a local-first paper, they can't comprehend.

 

An argument I've had over and over again. Just because something happens to be local doesn't mean the average reader gives a shit. I mean, c'mon, prep tennis or whatever. What kind of an audience does that have? I wonder sometimes if we cover it simply because we've always done it that way.

There's a (growing) percentage of the audience that is transient and has no ties to the local schools, didn't grow up there and would rather read MLB/NHL, whatever ahead of the prep and little league stuff. I understand it's a balancing act, but to just say local needs to be top shows someone isn't thinking.