This is why our line of work is a piece of S***

My only advice is to handle as much as you can handle without sacrificing the quality of the section. I'd rather read two good game stories than four bad ones. Maybe a meeting with several area coaches would help? Maybe you could call the coaches and athletic directors and explain your problem on the front end, so their undies don't get as wadded?

 

solid. damn. post.

 

How many of you have to use a copy editor-page designer from news that yuo have to tell something to twice a night, five times a week and eight times a month - then start all over the next month?

 

I think a lot of the problem is that we're continually being put in the position of ``covering'' for the higher-ups who make the cuts. We're the ones answering the calls, not the beancounter who decided to save a few bucks. 4th&8 is the guy talking to the soccer coach, making excuses.

It would be so much more satisfying for the beancounters to have to take those calls. Or for them to know the half of the reader discontent with the quality of coverage.

Sometimes I kind of feel like the PR man who represents some horrible, lung-cancer causing company. That's a little overstated maybe, but you get the idea.

As for your specific problem, 4th&8, I think roundups are the way to go. As much as we think people want game stories, at the prep level, I really think most readers just want to see little Jilly and Johnny's name in the paper and how fantastic their three home runs were that day.

Every once in a while, go out for some retail journalism, press the flesh and remind them who you are.

 

Who says the beancounters don't have to take those calls? Next time someone complains about staffing issues, send them the publisher's way.

 

Riiiiight.

 

Why not? They want to talk to the person who made the decision, transfer them in there.

Or, to cover your ass, give them the number (presumably also available in another forum), and they can call themselves.

 

Your name gets attached to such a stunt and you could lose a job that we (most of us at least) can't afford to lose.

You certainly, at the least, go on a silent, double-secret-probation shit list.

Papers are just itching for you to give them an excuse to cut you from the balloon. We have to suck it up.

 

I don't see what's so horrible about forwarding a complaint call up the chain of command. Maybe not directly to the publisher, but to the next guy on the totem poll.

I don't see it as a "stunt." I see it as trying to satisfy a disgruntled reader, which is just basic customer service.

If a guy calls to complain that he didn't get his paper this morning, I transfer him to circulation. If he calls to complain there was a misspelling in his help wanted ad, I transfer him to classified. If he calls to complain that we didnt' cover something because of staffing issues, it seems only logical to forward that complaint on.

 

The call will go to the higher-up's secretary and likely never will make it to the person you want it to go to.

 

Which is yet another reason to do it. It gets this person off your back, and you're not gonna get fired for transferring a call to a secretary.

 

I would still advise against it in this climate.

Those higher-ups might not like the idea of an employee not treating the cutbacks as a team player.