Fun with local weekly

dude, if you're getting this upset over a weekly "borrowing" your stats, you're going to stroke out within six months.

 

Yeah, you're right. I was thinking about just calling them and giving them the stats from now on.

 

i'm not saying bend over and let them have at it but you're going to experience a lot worse than this if you stay in this business. don't call the weekly publisher, editor or even the reporter because nothing good can come of it. now if you want to get creative and find some way to taste a little revenge, by all means have at it. hell, e-mail them under a bogus name and volunteer to send game stats, etc. as a parent or booster and then lie like hell on the stuff you send. then sit back and smugly but anonymously enjoy reading your lies in their paper.

 

That takes work, and seems worse than what they're doing. I understand I'm going to go through worse, but it still doesn't feel that way right now.

I felt like if they knew that we knew they were taking stats, it might stop. That's all the guy is hired to do (football) and he's riding our coattails to a paycheck.

I wish I could somehow get them a fake paper or bogus stats, but it's more than five days old by the time their paper comes out. They see it in our paper three times because of our relentless follows. The information is even more irrelevant because it's preview day.

If people followed you around, and copied the facts of your story, how would you suppress the need to punch them in the face?

 

I understand your frustration. But the stats are five days old when they hit the weekly, by which point people are more concerned with the next game than the last. You said it yourself. Frankly, I don't see how this weekly can even remain relevant. Why would you buy a paper talking about a nearly weekold game when another game is right around the corner?

There's your revenge.

 

For all you know, the coach may have told the weekly guy to get the stats out of your paper.
Or the coach may have read back what was in your paper.
But honest to God if you're that bothered by someone copying stats from your paper, you'll be out of the business in a year or your head will have exploded the first time the local radio read your stuff, word for word, on the air and didn't give you credit.

 

Comet bomb them. They'll be so busy cleaning up the mess that they won't be able to steal your stats for at least two weeks.

 

Bin-freaking-go. If the weekly SE wants to draft off your week-old heat and cede the area to you, let him. He's all but waved the white flag as it is. Let him wallow in his mediocrity.

 

That's how I saw it. Basically they are saying "You win." Obviously they aren't any competition for you if they are going to ape stuff out of your paper a week late and not even add anything to it.

And if the people in your area are just as obsessive about football as the people in mine, someone will notice what they are doing and say something, be it a parent a coach or someone else.

 

Went through this when I was first starting out. I actually found it more flattering than aggravating. By the time their paper came out with my stats, I had moved on to previewing the next week's games. This went on for a few months, then they dropped their sports section. The guy who had been doing sports told me they dropped it because they couldn't compete with me. One of the better feelings I had.

 

Send their Accounts Payable dept. an invoice -- make up a phony name and address, since you won't actually be collecting the money or attempting to cash the check for legal reasons -- charging them $400 for "stringer services."

If their bureaucracy is anything like a typical newspaper's, their bean counters will waste hours of time trying to get the bottom of the issue. And someone in their sports department will end up getting chewed out.

 

If a coach "told" me to do that, I would tell him no, because if I did it, I would get fired.