Actual V-ball mommy e-mail

Good post, Jay, but I gotta disagree. If I drop in on a coach or an admin, I expect them not to be there and if they are there they have every right to be put off that I just walked into their office and expected to speak with them. Now, I've had lots of relationships with coaches, ADs where I could do that and they knew they could blow me off if the time was not available and we would all be OK. But if I don't know a guy? That's just damn bad manners.

ALL that said, I've got up from my set on deadline many, many times and talked to a soccer or swimming or tennis parent. Not fun, but it usually keeps the mob at bay.

 

I assume that you are waltzing in to talk -- unannounced -- to coaches who aren't responding to your calls or emails. (Otherwise you'd be meeting them when they were free).

And I don't think writers do enough of this. Screw manners. You are trying to serve your readers, not make pals with coaches (which is one of the biggest problem in preps coverage).

 

Not sure I understand what you're saying but I was more referring to dropping in and seeing if they're available while you are in the department on other business. A basketball coach during football season, for instance, or vice versa. Less a formal thing than a human thing.

If you want to serve your readers I think it helps if you have a relationship of respect with the people from whom those readers are interested in hearing. I'm not suggesting knob-slobbing, but showing up unannounced and expecting a 30-minute sit-down is hardly the way to do business if you have any interest in doing it for longer than the 30 minutes you're in the office. Now if they are evading you, well, parking outside their house works just fine, too.

 

Dealing with the media is part of the job of being a coach. If a coach is not doing that, they should be bothered at school, not at home.

I'm not talking about walking in whenever and chatting with the jovial legendary football coach, but if some coach won't return calls or emails, I'll go to his office or practice. I don't like to be avoided.

 

Uh, I'd say it's the child's responsibility to pay for college. Definitely not the paper's, but it kills me that Junior and Missy expect Mommy and Daddy to mortage the house because they want to go to Expense U.

I'd suggest to the parent it's the coach's responsibility to get stats to recruiters and scouts, not the paper's.

It's flattering to think people believe newspapers have that kind of power, though.

 

I was trying to figure out a way to word it so that kids should also pay. Thing is, college is so expensive, it's either kids go into a massive debt, or the parents help pay for it. Either way, parents should be mature enough to know that it's not the newspaper's job to ask for scholarships (note that I said 'should be mature').

 

I agree with some of what you stated, Jay, including using the online sites for results, calendar events and "lists" that gobble up space.

Ten or 20 or 30 names from a 398-kid cross country race is enough for the paper. Toss the rest online with some photos, either from staff or submitted, and gussy up the Web site.


But I'll let Caller ID and voice mail handle the irate mother's bitching when I know she won't listen to reasonable, logical explanations about space constraints or why a 3-18 baseball team isn't going to be on the front page and the 19-1 ranked team is.

The customer is not always right and we do not have to submit ourselves for abuse. We are not whipping posts for anyone who wants to rail on us just because we've been trained to listen, agree and say we'll do better. Fuck that. We do know better how to run our business and having to listen to repeated shit from some irate, emotional mother who doesn't understand it isn't going to make a difference.

As for scholarships, if newspapers did have that kind of power then we're all in the wrong business. We should be in the high school local newsletter business, reporting every score, dig, homer, touchdown and goal so parents can send it out to college recruiters without those pesky Business, Metro, E! or Classifieds sections to worry about.

 

How do you know before you even talk to her that she won't listen to logical explanations? Sounds to me like you just want to avoid conflict or aren't all that confident of your logical explanations.

I think we should be listening to these people and hearing what they have to say. I have taken thousands of calls from angry parents and readers. A small percentage are just plain kooky but are glad to have had their say usually.

Most understand the situation and will listen to reason and often will nudge the coach to do a better job providing information if that's an issue.

Sometimes they have good ideas -- either for coverage or stories. When you start thinking that readers can't give you any ideas or input, that's a bad place to be.

 

Who doesn't want to avoid conflict?

If you like conflict, something's loose in your gearcase.

I just like to know what's coming at me whenever possible. Blindly wading into a discussion with an emotional parent because her child's goal didn't get mentioned isn't my idea of fun. If she leaves a voice mail I can call her back, be better prepared and she may have had time to settle down.

Good ideas come from people calling in and I'm not advocating ignoring readers completely. But if you have a buffer, a chance to know what's coming, why not use it if someone wants to berate you?

 

Being berated by an emotional parent doesn't faze me in the slightest, but then I'm married.

 

I understand Cadet's position and I agree to an extent.
Sometimes though I'd rather be the one to handle the complaints, because if they get tossed up the ladder, then you have no idea what to expect from upper management.
They may come up with a solution that only makes the situation worse.

I'm bumfuzzled as to why sportswriters think they don't influence who gets scholarships. I can think of two guys. One playing Division I and one in the NFL — a name everyone on here would recognize — who can both attribute their scholarships to local preps coverage.
In the first case, it was a new assistant coach assigned to recruit that area and used the paper, and me, as a resource as to who was good and who wasn't.
Both guys played at small high schools, but were exceptional talents, that were under the rivals radar.
The other guy, a local booster kept saw the kid's name pop up in coverage. And how he was a man child. So he took a look himself, and then convinced his alma mater to recruit and sign him. It was a good move for the school, since he's arguably one of the best players to ever come out of there.
So sometimes it isn't the coaches the paper influences, it is the readers who believe your coverage.
If it hadn't been for the paper, they would have probably ended up playing small college football. It wasn't that the paper gave either of them the talent, it gave them exposure.

And as Ace notes, talking to readers, apparently a revolutionary concept to some, will give you ideas that work. This is known as a good thing.