Do Parents Even Read The Paper?

Once a group of swimming parents were going to show ME, by god, and they told me they were going to cancel their subscriptions en masse. Which they did.

We ran the previously scheduled feature the next day.

 

Did they come into the office to do it or did they phone it in. If they were doing that as a show to me, personally, and took the effort to come to me to do that - for Christ's sake, we don't get that kind of recognition in the newsroom, in-house! It'd be flattering....somehow.

 

Dear <idiot parent>:

Thank you for writing. You probably just missed our two articles on Tuesday, the corresponding photos and the full results of that meet as your subscription probably expired. I am leaving a note with Nancy with subscriber services, who will contact you later today about renewing your subscription. Also, she can assist you in obtaining back copies of our paper for those particular two-days you missed.

Is there a phone number she can call you at? What's a good time for her to call?

Thanks,
Mr. Incaviglia
P.S. If you have some free time, I'm managing a minor league baseball team now in Grand Prairie, come watch us play. Your free tickets were in Tuesday's paper as well.

 

Coaches and parents don't read the paper.

Today's example:

We ran a correction from a story from the state track meet. Ran it on Page 3 underneath the header CORRECTION, where all corrections run.

Coach calls reporter at the state meet, then calls me at the office, leaving messages bitching that there was no correction in, "according to the parents."

My response, on her voicemail: "Coach, the correction is on Page 3. It's under the header, "CORRECTIONS". If you still can't find it, call me back."

Haven't heard from her yet.

 

Come on, guys, don't you know? If it's not in the Sunday paper, it doesn't count!

 

If nobody is reading the paper, does it still count?

 

The line "these kids work hard" screams one thing to me every time -- "Yeah I saw it, but my kid's name wasn't included so please run it again, with <i>all</i> names. Now."

 

What people read the paper for:

1. Cops reports.
2. Obits.

 

Band parents are the worst, by far.

"Bumblefuck High School just finished 28th in the 29-team state band competition. Would you please do a story on Page 1 or do I have to have a wolverine shred your testicles and feed them to her young after I've fire-bombed your Corolla, TP'd your house and called your publisher, who's in Rotary with me?"

 

We got a call the other day from a parent the other day asking if we were going to cover state track - the fact the paper has covered state track since forever and there are 17 schools in our area notwithstanding. I wanted to call her back and ask a bunch of sarcastic questions...What is this track you speak of? What do they do in said field? Do they do this in the basketball arena?

 

i hate when parents ask me if i am going to cover state anything when it comes up. we have seven schools in our area and every school will have at least two kids qualify for the state track meet.

 

Had a company vice president do that to me this week. Was near my desk talking very loudly about how the nearby big daily had big coverage about a former local start who had made the national news (but failed to mention that they were from a town in my coverage) and how we didn't have anything. I went over and pulled out back issue of the paper, which had a column by me specifically highlighting were kid had come from and how they had got to be where they were today and planted it in his hands. I somehow managed to avoid going completely ballistic.