How to handle unreturned calls?

I think you've handled it well. Confusing that he wouldn't make time to give you a few comments on a positive story. If I am working on a story that nobody assigned me and I get the shaft like that, I scrap the story. I have personal pride like you do. You have been very polite. I think you handled it well so far.

 

Always, ALWAYS, be careful what you say in a voice mail and an email. With what you posted, it sounds like (if he wanted) he could go over your head and claim this was a 1-2 day deal, not something drawn out for a week. And I'm not talking SE. I've seen these types that something like that and run to MEs or publishers and play sit and spin. Both the AD and the higher-up will ride the "don't have time" snippet.
Them treating you like dirt is SOP to them. You dictating to them in their almighty splendor only gets their twisted minds more twisted.
Be careful, and simply work around him. He'll call you afterward wanting to know why you didn't make him sound better.

 

I agree with being careful. As much as you know you're in the right, burning bridges rarely helps. I completely understand your frustration, especially working on a positive story. But the "I don't have time to keep making calls like this" message honestly makes me cringe a little bit -- especially if you don't know the guy very well. Regardless of your good intentions with the story, that kind of message can only be reacted to badly.

To cut a long, dragged-out story short, I had a co-worker leave a similar message with a coach who didn't call him back one week. Turned out the guy's wife was having cancer surgery and was trying to keep it quiet. The coach was doing the bare minimum work so the word didn't get out. When the coach got my co-worker's message, the coach totally flipped out. Got in touch with the publisher and it became pretty ugly.

The sad thing is that if the coach could have just said "I'm sorry, but I have no time to talk right now. I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can", much of this could have been avoided. Instead, he was screening his calls and only answering calls he absolutely had to.

Wow...I just realized I did a horrible job cutting that short.

 

Like others have said, leave him a message that says you'd like to talk to him for the story, but because of your deadline, you will have to run it with or without him.

If he doesn't call, that's too bad, but in the end, it's probably he that is losing out the most.

 

I hear that. I've been in this business longer than a decade, and I don't remember ever getting so riled up over a situation like this. I've had messages ignored; I've been treated rudely. I've never left frustrated e-mails. This particular case just got under my skin for the way the guy blatantly lied to me. You don't want to talk or don't have time? Fine. But don't say you'll call on my scheduled time off and have me go out of my to accommodate you and then stiff me.

For what it's worth, I gave my boss the blow by blow, and he said he would have left a harsher message.

 

Good for your boss. Sounds like he/she has a clue.