Taxpayers deserve JV coverage.

I love this one too. See, I thought our job was to report facts, not "build teams up." What are we, PR firms?

 

Server space is cheaper than print. Move that community sports stuff totally online. When parents call to complain say "Kids today are so tech-savvy, we think they'd get a bigger kick seeing their team photo online than in the newspaper. And it's all about the kids."

 

I can buy putting the stuff on the Web. But, hell, we struggle just to put out a paper. The suggestion has merit, though.

 

Most of us here understand that for small papers, local sports is the bread and butter. If you don't have anything else to do, and only have something like 1 or 2 school districts to cover, then you have to do what you have to do.

It's a long-standing tradition on here to bash local sports parents because for most of us, we've had to deal with hypocritical people who act irrationally no matter how much we try to discuss with them our reasons for why we do what we do (if that makes sense). They don't understand that we are not cheerleaders, and that it's not our job to publicize their little darlings so they can receive college scholarships.

There's the old saying, "The customer is always right." Thing is, in journalism, the customer isn't always right. Journalists are somewhat like umpires and referees. They have to call the news as they see it, and when we try to explain that we have to use our best judgement and find stories that everyone, not just a few parents and relatives, will like, they then run to the publisher to complain that the journalist isn't catering to their whim.

 

Exactly.

Arrogance and ego, Liut? Sounds more like you just can't handle people disagreeing with you.

 

Bumping up only because I got the ol' double whammy Monday!

Reader thinking we favor one school over the other because we had only a small story Saturday about their team's win (that was out of town and we couldn't staff), but the big story and photos were of the rivals (who were in town, plus it was their homecoming) ... PLUS the "there should be more about the JV because they work just as hard and in a couple of years they're gonna get the (trophy) back" letter!

Or as I say to anyone who'll listen, this is why newspaper people drink!

 

The JV players work hard, but do they work smart? That's a lesson for later in life, kids!

 

High school tennis coach has been riding my ass for about a week now about how we covered the state championships. The tournament was held an hour away, where we have a sister paper, so we just picked up their coverage rather than spending manhours and mileage.

The story, naturally, focused on that paper's kids and barely mentioned our locals. Their results were in the story, but they weren't quoted. This causes the tennis coach to go ape-shit. She's promised to get me fired "because some of the most important business leaders in the city have kids on the tennis team."

She kept harping on how her kids deserve the same coverage as football, basketball and volleyball. Finally, I just told her ... "Tell you what, you get 5,000 people to attend tennis matches next year and I'll give it equal coverage as we give football. Get 500 to show up and you'll get the same as basketball and if 50 show up you'll get the same as volleyball."

 

Inky, was there any way you could have gotten the local kids on the phone and inserted their quotes into the sister paper's story or was your sister paper was supposed to do have the quotes?

At one of (my now-former) papers, we'd frequently would arrange with the coach ahead of time to call us anyways with their kids so we could get quotes.

But, at the same time, frequently if it was a two-team sport in our sister paper's area, we'd arrange for the sister to cover the story and tell them to have quotes for us, and they wouldn't bother to do so.

In a way, I can't blame the tennis coach for being unhappy if she opened up the paper expecting to see a story on her kids, and instead, found a story on other kids from out of the circulation area. Playing the 'I'll get you fired' route is ridiculous, however, and only accomplished antagonizing you.

 

One had four girls tennis parents (out of the top five singles players) do some pre-emptive complaining. I was new, season hadn't started and they were warning me that they had better be covered.

 

As soon as they go the "I'll get you fired" route, that's the end of the conversation. Thanks for calling. Have a nice day.

i would absolutely have a conversation with the SE or the reporter from the sister paper. If they are covering the event for you, it is their responsibility to cover your team as well. Unless it was really tight to deadline, which I doubt on a tennis match, they didn't do their jobs properly and you are stuck taking shit for it.

 

What we had was fine. She just thinks tennis should get more coverage. There was one quote from the coach whose team won. The rest was basic results. I've got no problem with what we ran. I mean, it's high school tennis. Not even most of the parents show up for matches.