Player's mother e-mails in pictures/What I wish I could do

We run a photo to break up the agate on our stat page. It's a perfect spot for unique wire shots or (as is happening more and more lately) team shots of district or provincial championship teams. I think the photo loses its impact if it's "the winning team of the day" as it seems to have become, but it's an option. Or run it in a "standalone" format to break up a page.
Particularly at a community weekly newspaper, with the woman a prominent attorney in town, you'd better offer her at least a response and an explanation of your policy.
First, it's the role of the weekly to offer community type news and information that Big Time Daily down the street doesn't bother with. Second, she probably knows many of the heavy hitters in town and will freely trash talk your product if you just brazenly ignore her.
Don't kiss her ass mind you. But don't ignore her...

 

At the small daily paper where I was a one-man staff, I was required to have a local photo every day. We had no AP wire photos. So, reader submissions were encouraged. Not only did it make my job easier, it also made plenty of readers happy.

There were plenty of times, where, either the weather was poor, or I was busy doing other things, or if I just wanted an evening off, where the reader-submitted photos came in very handy.

 

My place is a community chain, probably a lot like the one the original poster works for. While I agree a little tact goes a long way in dealing with this sort of thing, we don't run submitted photos. We've got a big coverage area and if we start doing that, we'll be flooded with them and a lot more people will get bent out of shape because they'll perceive that we have some sort of bias about what we do and don't run.

On occasion, if someone sends an action photo that is of good enough quality, we'll consider running it. But I don't remember the last time I got one of those. Most of it is team photos (which we simply will not publish) and really bad action taken with point-and-shoot digital cameras and shot from the sidelines, 20 or 30 yards away from the action without the proper lens.

You can head this off by making sure you're balancing your coverage well, hitting all parts of your coverage area. And get schedules for your local youth leagues and give them to the photo staff and have them swing past the fields whenever they've got time to get a shot.

 

Aw, it's so cute that you still have a photo staff. Good luck with that in three months.

 

Yeah, I keep waiting for them to tell me I'm losing a reporter. But yes, having a photo staff (a big one, six people) is nice. I once worked for a small daily that didn't have a photo staff. We ran a lot of ribbon cuttings and hand shakings and check presentations and really badly out of focus sports action shot by yours truly. I'd rather spend all day fielding phone calls from angry youth sports parents than work for a paper without photographers.

 

Mr X, I can't believe your attitude. You're not the New York Times. You're a weekly community newspaper that should be courting community involvement. You should be getting your readers involved. I don't care if this woman sends you a picture every week. You should be grateful that someone's interested. Print a picture of a baseball team and you've got 20 people buying the paper just to see their kids' pictures. You're essentially suggesting that you don't need a paying customer. That's a dangerous thing these days.

 

I have no problem with the rest of what you said, but this line really troubles me as the proud editor of a weekly newspaper.

Sure, there are weeklies out there that are little more than ragged advertising vehicles, but there are some of us really trying to put out quality papers every week.

It's hard enough to cultivate a perception in the public that you're trying to run the same kind of quality journalism they'd hope to see from the big guys (or better), let alone have people in your own industry dump on weeklies as someone who'd run anything.

In fact to me, with only one deadline a week instead of six or seven, I'd think weeklies could be even more picky with their space.

 

Part of the reason that the newspaper industry is in the crapper is there are not more people like mr x -- willing to make tough and unpopular decisions with the readers yet keeping the best interests of the paper in mind.

There is a weekly in my area that accpepts e-mailed photos of local stories of interest. The dam paper is fillled weekly with pictures of local people at sporting events , fund raisers, ect. I don't know how they stay in business.

 

For the record, I would politely decline to use the photo. I have a set policy for team pictures tied to achievements and that's pretty firm. I also make sure to assign games and produce content.

Yes, a local paper does have the mandate to do the things the big paper down the road won't do and engage the community, but I don't see where journalistic standards and quality should suffer.

 

QFT as a fellow weekly newspaper editor.

I often have the battle with my publisher and CEO when they have stuff they INSIST get in the paper and I have to do a mega squeeze job to get it in because I have enough news or opinion content.

I'll consider reader-provided content depending what it is and whether I have room for it. I won't run just anything, but there is something to be said for serving the public as a weekly in a media market with the big boys being among the biggest boys in the country.

 

You mean other than selling newspapers to the people that care about this?

 

Every time that phone rings at your little rag you ought to be thankful. Complaint, criticism, praise, whatever. There is nothing too small for a small weekly/biweekly/whatever to cover, truth be told. I do a lot of stringer work for one of those, and if I hear that there was a reaction to something I produced in between the time someone picked up the paper and the time they put it in the catbox, I'm fucking thrilled to be honest.

Anyone who is deciding to provide less while expecting to get more are part of the problem. You ought to be thankful you're still relevant to someone, and you ought to be thankful you've got a job in the business. (I guess?)

We ran this kind of stuff all the time at a daily that covered plenty of stuff that had little relevance outside of a group of people you could fit into the bleachers at your typical Little League park. I only got annoyed with poor photos or missing/inaccurate cutlines (Ma'am, if the coach/team mom or whoever spells your kid's name wrong we likely don't have any way of knowing any different!) We did what we could with what we got, and it ran when space allowed. Now people who insisted it run the next day in the paper weren't kowtowed to. They got what everyone else got and in the end people were interested in the paper. Unfortunately, not interested enough to make it produce enough revenue to keep the corporate whores happy enough to keep it alive...