Dear dimwit on the phone

More fun on the duty phone. Legit caller, but what's wrong with this picture?
Professional American traveling abroad 6/26.
Attempted coup in destination country 7/15
Supervisor in USA received reports of arrests of professional American 8/8
Duty officer destination country receives wake-up call at 11 p.m. to deal with "emergency situation" 8/15

 

"Hey, when is the baseball thing going to run?"
We have a submitted photo from a youth tournament, a feature ready to go on a player and a submitted announcement for tryouts for a fall league we're putting in the calendar, but yeah, go ahead and be vague. When I asked the caller what she was referring to, she clarified "well Bob said he was going to call you." No clue who Bob is, but thanks.

 

"Well, the other thing needs to run first. Once you see that, you'll know the baseball thing will be coming soon."

 

Forgot to post this one from a few days ago.

Lady calls my line wanting to know why the first game for the Kentucky team playing in the Little League World Series isn't on TV, even though her guide says it should be on. Blames us for providing incorrect info instead of her cable company.

Gotta love old folks.

 

Multiple area teams qualify for amateur baseball state tourney, so we run a preview. Reporter went out to interview a coach from one of the teams. Later that day, coach emails in to say:

Just so you know [reporter] did stop by today to do a small preview of the team at state. [The three area teams] all made state and your paper has given little to no coverage as of late and the preview sounds like it will be 2 sentences. This is really poor and the reason why I dont subscribe to the paper. [Other area papers] do a better job of covering local sports and I think its unfortunate.

Well actually coach, we ran an 800-word story on the three teams and your team's writeup was the longest. We also had at minimum a photographer at basically every home game of your season. But thanks for not subscribing! Oh and it's hard to give you coverage during the season in game briefs when all you send us after a game is:

Podunks went on the road for doubleheader and beat Podunkville 4-3 and Podunk City 10-2. 11-4 and 8-3 in conference. Currently in first place of conference
Thx

 

"Well I'm looking at the guide that came with your paper, who else would I call?"

 

Years ago woman calls asking which channel CBSSN, which was carrying the Podunk State game, was.

"I don't know. You may want to contact your service provider. "

"Oh, would they know?"

"Yes, they know which channels they carry. " (click).

 

Got a call last night from one of our soccer coaches, shortly after 11 -- and about 20 minutes after the roundup was finished and put on the page. A few seconds in to the call came this little back and forth:

Coach: Did you not get my results? I texted you right after the game.
Me: Which number did you text?
Coach: This one, the one I just now called.
Me: Coach ... this is a landline. We can't get texts on this phone.
Coach: Oh.
Me: Yeah ...

 

Figured this was as good a place as any for a "Today in bad story-picture alignment" segment.

 

I do often wonder if common folk understand the vertical line means a new story. It's second nature if you're around page design, but I doubt most people even see it when reading the paper.

 

A few Olympics ago, a lady called up outraged that what we had listed on TV was incorrect. Not only that, but she pointed out how USA Today and our rival newspaper had it wrong too, but she was only upset with us. Thanks NBC and your wonderful ideas about how to broadcast the Olympic games.

 

This year, we abandoned all pretense, just said "Coverage begins at 7 p.m. on NBC" and let it go at that. Zero phone calls.