How would you handle this?

I doubt the "keep it up and we won't cover you" tactic would work since it's often not the kids, but their parents who care about coverage. Go after the one thing they do care about, playing time. Tell the coach what happened.

 

Sure your bosses would love you threatening teenagers and telling them that your personal whims will determine coverage.

 

Calmly tell them they brought sunflower seeds to a chaw fight. Proceed as necessary.

 

I'd tell my bosses that I wasn't being serious with them.

 

Not a wise move. Even joking about it has the potential to be taken very seriously and very negatively when done in the public eye, unless it's patently obvious that everyone's in on the gag.

 

Had a similar incident (thought not involving spitting) years ago with the local parochial school.
A special speaker talked to the kids about volunteering and I got a picture from slightly behind and to the side of the speaker so you could see her and the students.
I took four pics. Three showed a small group of boys making obscene gestures (way beyond flying the bird). This was before digital, so what they did wasn’t discovered until after the film and pictures were developed.
Hilarity ensued on several fronts:
1) We had to explain to our editor what the gesture (form a ‘V’ with you fingers and add a tongue) meant.
2) At least three members of the staff were graduates of said school and weren’t pleased.
3) One of the grads also helped coach a team at the school, including one of the boys involved.
The editor called the principal, relayed what happened and got a quick apology from him. The school then made each boy come into the office to apologize. The best was when the athlete came in.
He didn’t know his coach was there. The coach came around the corner, jabbed a finger in the kid’s sternum and told him he’d rip him a new one if said kid ever embarassed him, the school and his family like that again.
We never had another problem.

 

Just took a drink as I read this. I now need paper towels to wipe off my monitor.

 

Then if people complained, I'd tell them to have a talk with their kids about being respectful to total strangers. It shouldn't even matter that it was happening to a sportswriter. They were being disrespectful to someone who had done nothing to them.

 

If you told the kids you worked at the paper and to stop or you wouldn't cover them, they'd tell you to fuck off.

If you put their names in your story, or what they were doing, then you'd look like the previously noted douchebag.

I guess you weren't kidding. Blue font meter not needed.

 

For sunflower seeds, yeah, it'd be douchey. For shitty behavior, nope.

Years ago, I covered a basketball game in which the local student section was getting really out of hand with taunting the opposition. Visiting coach complained, and the home school's superintendent went over to tell the kids to cool it.

Instead of shutting up, the kids start yelling back at the super. And the parents, sitting in a different section, instead of telling their own kids to shut up, also start yelling at the super.

Meanwhile, I, camera in hand, trying to be unobtrusive, walk over and take a couple of pics of the super telling off the kids, and eventually ejecting them.

AFter the game, a couple of angry parents came to me and asked if the pics were going to run. I was non-committal because I didn't know if they came out (pre-digital era), and I told them I'd discuss it with my bosses. They got pissed, and I told them that the kids' behavior was more newsworthy than the game.

Pics came out OK, but the bosses decided not to run them. The crowd behavior was the main focus of the story, although I did devote roughly half of it to the actual game. No names were put in, but it seemed like everyone got the message. They cooled down for the rest of the season.

 

Seems like there's a general lack of civility these days, not just in this example, but in others I've seen. Like some old guy laughing when an umpire got smoked with a pitch in the collarbone, or students taunting a softball player while she was writhing in pain with a leg injury which forced her to be carried off the field, or a coach no-commenting a writer only to show up on the 11 o'clock news that night after his team's district tournament final. Nice example others are setting for the rest of us, huh?

 

1. Ask the kids to stop.

2. If they don't, move.

3. Then quietly talk to the AD or their coach about it. Don't publicly make a big deal of it. We're the storytellers, not the story.

A few years back, I was covering a prep girls' basketball game between a team from our coverage area and a league rival from just outside of our coverage area. Both teams were pretty good, and it was in our local team's gym.

After the game, I waited to talk to the visiting coach. As the girls were leaving the locker room, I went in and talked to him. He proceeded to change his pants. He was around the corner from the girls who still were in the locker room (one of whom was his daughter), but still ... (FYI - the girls didn't change their clothes in the locker room - they simply put their sweats and letter jackets on over their uniforms.)

I mentioned it to the home team coach in a phone conversation after the next game. I didn't put anything about it in the paper.

Well, the next time I saw Mr. Droopy-drawers, boy was he pissed. He accused me of telling a bunch of people. No, I didn't. I told the home-team coach - no one else. I could have said something after the game in question to the home-team coach, who was in the gym with several other people around. I did not.

Handling the issue quietly, and not making myself part of the story, was the best way to go.