the apocalypse is upon us, errr me

I don't know how much I can reveal without outing myself but here is a new idea posed by my newspaper — I'm figuring it's been handed down from uppers.

The idea is we randomly select a person from the phone book and do a feature on them.

This is not a joke.

 

I didn't do it this year, but for the 2 years before I randomly called people in the phone book for Super Bowl predictions. It turned out pretty good.

 

The real news is going to cover itself, heh?

 

Well, if you worked in Roswell you'd be stuck doing the Monday feature.

Do. Not. Monday. Feature!

 

Washington Post Style section?

 

See, I could actually get into doing something like that.

In the shrinking world of newspapers, however, I'm not sure it's a good idea.

 

I'm curious? How does this work?

Do you call them?

Or do you scope out their address, knock on the door, and
hold up a sign that says: "Please open, I'm not Mormon?"

 

1 point. If you get lucky doing that it could be a hell of a story. It has to be taken as an odd ball direction.

I once worked at a place that the publisher had a fixation on bowling. INstead of covering a minor league game, he wanted us to go to the local lanes and do stories on those people. this was a daily newspaper mind you.

 

Call 'em up and go:

"Have you checked the children? Just kidding! I'm Joe Cockamamey from the Daily Jism, and I'm calling because we want to do a feature story on you. Yeah, we just opened the phone book and picked your name. Sooooo, have you done, like, any stuff?"

 

This idea is horrendous on so many levels. By picking up the phonebook your newspaper is basically giving up, admitting that it can't or won't try and find the people who are actually making news. Crap News: Why do the reporting when we can let our fingers do the walking ...

 

"Hi, I'm calling from the Podunk Times, and we want YOUR story!!!"

"That's great, but I don't have a story."

"No Sir, everybody has a story."

"Not me."

"C'mon, yes you do ..."

"OK, I eat my own shit. Are you happy?"

 

Seems to me this would cause you to do quite a bit of leg work for little return.

But on the flipside, as the saying goes, even a blind squirrel can find a nut.