Do Parents Even Read The Paper?

I just received an e-mail from parent. He was sending me the results of the latest district track meet "as a favor, in case I never got them" because "a lot of these young kids work hard and won medals." He was "wondering if we could the results."

Uh, no shit. It's a two-day championship meet that ran Wednesday/Thursday in our own back fucking yard. We ran two photos Thursday/Friday (including a shot on A1 on Friday) and story in each day's paper; and every gold, silver and bronze medalist from both days.

I felt like replying "Check the paper. We were there — BOTH DAYS!"

It makes me wonder if these idiots even read the paper.

 

Could be worse. You could have a publisher and CEO who don't read your own paper.

I've gotten a few calls of "you'd better run this this week.
Me: "I already ran it on page E-5 this week."
Them: "Oh."

Or: "I'm very upset you didn't run this last week."
Me: "Yeah I did. It's on page E-6." Or: "I ran it on April 17."
Them: "Oh."

 

There is nothing better than when a "reader" or even management asks why something wasn't covered and you can respond, "It was. Here's the date."

 

I'm convinced in many places parents don't realize what's in the paper unless their child is in a five-column vertical photo on the front of the section.

 

Yes. To look for the names of their kids.

 

Amen. They even get mad when their kid's teammate gets some cred. Baseball parents are easily the worst.

 

Some people can't be satisfied. Truthfully, some of these people aren't reading the paper unless they're expecting their kids to be in the paper for whatever reason. If they missed it, it might as well not have happened to them.

There are a lot of people, too, who showed a lot of interest in the paper, lots of comments, praise, criticism, whatever from them until their kids graduated. Then I'd never hear from them again.

 

But here's what I don't get: We had an A1, three-column photo from the event ABOVE THE FOLD on the Friday. And Thursday, we had a sports front photo (same size) and one INSIDE on Sports 3.

How did this guy assume we weren't at the meet?!

 

maybe he knows you personally?

 

My hunch is that he didn't pick up the paper that day.

 

Zing!

 

I don't know where you are, but 'round here, baseball parents are definitely not the worst. Swim parents, lacrosse parents, soccer parents, softball parents, track parents and a whole bunch of other parents rank well ahead of baseball parents, as far as I'm concerned.