'Five Things Journalists Never Want to Hear While on Assignment'

"So, when are you doing a story on our freshman team? They are UNDEFEATED, you know. By the way, my son is the star on the team."

 

Oh, but it definitely happens, and it is always an awkward extraction. It happens the other way around, too, of course. We had a guy in our office who was about 90 percent of the way through reporting a story before it was pointed out someone else had written it three weeks prior, and that it had been done two other times in the previous year or two. That didn't dissuade him, either. He "found a different angle," or thought he did.

 

Coach: You otta do a story on Jimmy
Me: Why?
Coach: Well, he works really hard
Me: OK, let's do this

 

They're on the road this week.

 

I'm growing to loathe the phrase hard work. We get it, such and such kid works hard, that's why you start him. He's boring as cardboard because all he does is watch film and go to class, but all the hard work (which will be nothing compared to what's asked of him at the next level).

 

Showed up for a basketball game yesterday to find the boys coach standing outside the gym, no security guard at the entrance, and the last of the kids filtering out from various after school activities.
Me: Soooo ... are you playing tonight?
Coach: No, we rescheduled that game. Didn't I send you a text?
Me: I don't think so.
Coach: Oh. Sorry about that.

Same thing happened a couple of years ago. I drove 45 minutes to cover one of our locals at a Christmas tournament, only to show up and find the host school practicing. Seems their scoreboard had blown up two weeks earlier, they couldn't fix it in time, and they canceled the tournament. No one from the local school had bothered to tell us.
Thanks, guys.
Luckily, in both cases there was another game in town I was able to audible to and salvage something of the day.

 

What's the nice way to tell a coach you don't want to do those types of stories because no one will read them and you want some feature story ideas that are meaningful? Unless he works so hard he gets rhabdo.

 

"Let me talk to my editor. I have to run that by him."
Or...
"Let me think on that a bit. It's a little unusual, so I have to think of a way to approach it."
Or...
"That's not a bad idea. We're a little busy here, though, with all these games the next couple of weeks, so it might be a bit. Just have to find a week where we can give it a little more time and space."

Or just file it away, wait for the kid to have a decent game or a big moment, and then use it in a featurized gamer. There are bad ideas, and then there's just ill-timed ones. Most ideas that seem silly are the latter.

 

"No" always worked just fine for me.