How do I respond nicely to this parent?

Ask for Starman...

 

You worked at the JRC too?

 

i hear good things about that JRC.

 

Last year, I received a call from a mom asking about "the editing process." Seems there was a story about a seventh grade basketball team that identified one of the players as "one of the best seventh graders in the state." Out of the hundreds or perhaps thousands of seventh-grade basketball players in the state, I'm not certain how the writer arrived at that conclusion, but since there was no objective evidence to back up that assertion, it never saw the light of day. The caller (who by the way, did not write the article, it seems that youth sports pieces are "peer-reviewed" before they're sent to the paper) said that simply stating the kid did well in a particular game didn't adequately explain how good the kid was. I stood my ground and said I couldn't allow that kind of hyperbole in the paper any more than I could allow the writer to say the kid was the next Michael Jordan.
I wish there was a nicer way to say this to people: If you need me to publish anything as is, without editing or cutting anything, don't write anything for my paper. And good luck finding any honest, competent editor who will tell you he can do it.
Also, it seems to be a tradition around here to send team photos to the paper at the end of the season. I wish I could ignore them, but I can't. I usually end up publishing entire pages with as many as six or eight of them.

 

Agreed. Also, tell him that if you change the policy for his team, then it opens a can of worms for everyone else. To do that for his team and not others wouldn't be fair to the other teams. And if he agrees and flips it and says, "You're right about that, you should list all the names for every team," go back to the start and remind him that's why that policy is there in the first place.

 

We do the end of season team photo thing too. The key is to bury them as much as possible and NEVER run them in color. If the person who submits the photos forgets proper cutline information, they'll be lucky to get one e-mail or call to correct it. After that...fuck em.

 

Dear Soccer Dad,

Here's Swim Mom's e-mail address (mykidworkshard2@hotmail.com). You have a lot in common.

Regards,
Cadet.

 

Two words:

Flying. Cluebrick.

 

we have a winner.

 

I thought this was better, but I do what I can.

 

Well done, boys.

 

We had something like that at my paper. A woman in another department wanted to argue a style point with me via e-mail. After two taunting replies, I forwarded it to her boss and my boss. A blissful silence soon descended.