angry parent threatens ad dollars...

Or coach the Raiders.

 

is al not happy with his job?

 

The problem is, when advertising goes to the publisher to complain, it's the sports staff that will be thrown under the bus. Advertising will not have your back in this. And your spineless publisher will tell the sports editor, "Cover that team, I don't care what you have to drop to do it. Just make it happen." Because they're bottom-line kinda guys and don't care about the process, just the results. And it gets a complaining parent/advertiser off their backs.

This is the same song, second verse, of what we heard in the past. Even when departments were fully staffed, something got left out, or wasn't the lead story, or didn't get a photo with the story, or whatever real or imagined slight the offended party believed to be true. Because space and time always were and always will be finite commodities. Now there's just less of both.

 

If it shook out that way, yes. But here's how it's more likely to go down.

1. Team isn't covered much anymore.
2. Parent complains about lack of coverage.
3. Staffer explains that cutbacks have forced coverage cuts across the board, and this is one result.
4. Parent calls advertising department and threatens ad revenue loss because of the situation.
5. Advertising department says that's just sports' excuse for not doing their job.
6. Advertising comes to Publishing and says that sports isn't doing its job, and advertising shouldn't be responsible for sports complaints.
7. a) Guess who's budgeted for a 50-inch takeout on the utter splendor of the team for whom the parent is complaining? b) We wish you well in your future endeavors

 

Absolutely. After all, they're screwing workers out of jobs aren't they?

 

Bring your own ky, vaseline, joy jelly, what have you.

What - you honestly thought THEY were gonna provide it for you?!?

 

advertisers pay to sell their fucking product, period. if they aren't happy with the content or the target market they are reaching with their ads, they should pull the plug.

if you think you can dictate what's news and what isn't by threatening to pull your adverting, suck a big dick and start a newsletter.

 

More people need to read Fast Copy by Dan Jenkins. There's a bit where a local businessman threatens to pull his ads. Betsy Throckmorton responds by banning him from advertising for a month.

I have no idea if anything like that ever happened, but Jenkins does incorporate a lot of events from his life into his fiction.

 

Yep,heard this scenario 100 times if I'd heard it once. All you (as the lowly reporter/copy desk editor) can do is tell the truth and perhaps,if you're having a good day, suggest a compromise.

I've done that with teams in "minor" sports that wanted more coverage, but wouldn't lift a finger to call in game results. People would be amazed at how happy just a minimum of coverage makes some of these folks.

But I'd never suggest bowing to threats.

 

we've always covered this school once, and most times twice, in person every year. the troubling thing is this year they probably deserve it more than most other years.

the guy didn't get anywhere with his ad-pulling routine. but he did try with some line about how newspapers are dying and we shouldn't come crawling back to him for money when we need it.

it was as if he looks at our ad salespeople as beggars on the street, offering him no service whatsoever for his pocket change. the audience we deliver to his business? a throw-away, a window wash he doesn't even want.

are more advertisers thinking this way because of the direction of the business? or has this always been a problem?

 

Unfortunately, the ad staff at my paper doesn't know that. They think that they are doing advertisers a favor by suggesting content. I'm at a small paper, so there isn't much of a wall between advertising and editorial. I know that's no excuse, but my complaints go nowhere.

 

I regularly have advertising reps come up to me and say "Oh, so and so advertiser has a kid on such and such a team, can you guys cover them?" and I respond with "No". They ask: "Why not?" I tell them, simply, we don't have time and if we get to them, great, but they'll be more likely to get coverage if they send us in results and/or pictures.