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The best phone call/compliment you ever received

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Baron Scicluna, Feb 13, 2008.

  1. friend of the friendless

    friend of the friendless Active Member

    Sirs, Madames,

    One msg I probably won't delete any time soon:

    "Hi -----

    Wanted to tell you that the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame called about 2 months ago and wants to represent my father in the museum. Your article was instrumental in calling their attention back to him and his scouting accomplishments. You don't know haow grateful I am to you that you wrote this piece. I have had quite a few calls from various people who have read the article and felt compelled to contact me, and it has been a wonderful trip back in time.

    Again, thanks for caring enough to compile all the information needed, and I am sorry that it took so long for me to notify you!

    Best Regards,
    Toni Lucadello


    YD&OHS, etc
     
  2. captzulu

    captzulu Member

    Case 1: When I was starting out as a stringer, I covered one area school's boys' tennis team -- a state title team led by two very good players -- for much of a season. I probably covered 4 or 5 of their matches through the conference and state tourneys. At the end of the state individual final (when the two star players played each other), one of the players' father came up to me and thanked me for the coverage they've gotten and invited me to a barbecue the two families were planning (which I politely declined, of course).

    Case 2: I wrote a feature about a long-time local college track coach who was retiring at the end of the year. A week or so after the story ran, I received a letter from him thanking me for the story and the photo (which I did not take). I wrote back a thank-you note, and his letter, framed, is still sitting around the house somewhere almost 10 years later.
     
  3. Birddog

    Birddog Guest

    Mine was an e-mail from a mom whose son had a severe speech impediment, She wrote that one of the few times he could overcome it was when he was reading one of my columns to her.
    That meant more than all my writing awards combined!
     
  4. PaperDoll

    PaperDoll Well-Known Member

    A high school soccer team from the lone mainly Hispanic school in the area went deep into the playoffs for the first time several years ago. A lot of these kids are either immigrants themselves -- from multiple Central and South American nations that don't necessarily get along -- or the first generation born in the United States. All season, they reminded me why I do this job.

    The coach (a newbie who didn't speak Spanish) passed along compliments from the English as a Second Language teachers at the high school. The kids were bringing the newspaper to class because they wanted to read about the team.

    One boy who had emigrated from Colombia about four months earlier and spoke no English at all had gotten his name in a headline. (No thanks to me, hi deskers!) At the next game I covered, he brought me over to the stands, and spoke really fast Spanish to somebody, who translated that the kid wanted more copies of the paper to send to his mother in Colombia. I asked how she'd read it, and he said he'd help her -- and how proud she'd be to see his name.

    I try to remember that team whenever I'm thinking about changing careers.
     
  5. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Good for you, Doll.

    Though I know lots of lovely people who would be happy to tell those lads that they need to make the damn effort to learn English good before they sully our shores with their foreign presence.
     
  6. Rumpleforeskin

    Rumpleforeskin Active Member

    Here's the first one that came to mind. I need to sift through a couple others to remember the full story...

    When I was in college, two basketball players were kicked off the team immediately following a game I was covering. They laughed at a teammate who was dunked on. I mean, he was given a Jenna Jameson-type facial on an alley-oop. Well, I went to talk to the coach about the "suspensions" the next day and I brought up the subject. I said I saw what happened on the bench and I saw the look he gave the players and then, poof, they were gone. He said he didn't know what I was talking about. I went back and forth with him trying to get him to say something and finally, he came very close to giving me a great quote, but stopped himself. The coach told me, "You know, you remind me a lot of Dick Schaap's son. What's his name? Oh yeah, Jeremy. You ask a lot of hard questions and are not afraid of much. You'll do well for yourself as a journalist."

    One of the best compliments I got to this day.
     
  7. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Compliment? Sounds like he managed to smooth talk you and change the subject.
     
  8. AgatePage

    AgatePage Active Member

    high school state soccer semifinals back in the late 90s, maybe 2000. Local powerhouse advances to the state final after the third- or fourth-best player has the game of her life, 2 goals, 2 assists, IIRC. Grab the coach afterward, say, "wow, she was amazing today." he says, "she hasn't slept in 2 days and her grandfather died last night." She and the grandfather were very close apparently, he came to several of her games, very crushing, etc., etc.

    I go to talk to the girl, who I have talked to in the past, and I can still remember the look on her face. She was normally a very happy, talkative person who always had a smart-aleck thing up her sleeve. But it was just this look of melancholy. To her credit, she talked about her grandfather -- stopping at one point to turn for a second and say, "i'm not going to cry about this today" (man I remember that look still ... painful) -- and finished the interview. Got a quote from her best friend on the team, went back and wrote my story about her playing through the pain and exhaustion. It was a good story, had several people at work compliment me.

    About a week later, the father writes me a letter, saying they weren't sure if her playing was the right thing, but that the story was good for them in so many ways. The parents got to see how strong their daughter was, and the girl got to show everyone how important her grandfather was to her. Apparently one of their family traditions was for each person to leave something special in the casket before he was buried. The granddaughter chose my article, saying that was how she wanted him to always see her.

    The office must have been a little dusty that day.
     
  9. Rumpleforeskin

    Rumpleforeskin Active Member

    I responded to him by saying "Thanks a lot, but I would like to know why so and so were suspended..." He kicked me out of his office after evading two more questions.
     
  10. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Good job then, Woodstein.
     
  11. Rumpleforeskin

    Rumpleforeskin Active Member

    Still got my story and the coach answered a whole bunch of questions at his next presser about the suspensions.
     
  12. Walter Burns

    Walter Burns Member

    Two stories, opposite ends of the spectrum:

    1. I wrote a silly throwaway feature (really, the only reason I wrote it was because the entertainment centerpiece fell through) on campus bathrooms while in college. I didn't have to pay for a drink all weekend.

    2. Seven years later...a fire chief dies of a heart attack on Saturday. I cover the funeral and have a story done for Thursday's paper about how heart attacks are the leading cause of line of duty deaths for firefighters. The day the story appeared, I got an e-mail from a competitor saying that she was working the same story for next Sunday. That one went up the chain, and I got a bonus that Christmas for it.
     
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