Unplug the phones

He likes to micromanage. His influence on the news side was essentially removed, so now he gets to focus on sports.

 

And now you're on the record saying so. In addition to all but saying your SE is lazy. And calling into question a new policy that is probably only being implemented at a handful of papers.

You might have made a bad decision in starting this thread.

 

If I thought there was even a chance he had ever heard of SportsJournalists.com, or was interested in anything posted on here, I never would have started this thread.

 

What are they going to do, fire him? That would have happened in a week anyway.

 

Find out what news did to blow him off and follow that plan.

 

We get a pretty high amount, percentage-wise, of call-ins from our coaches. But even then, we still have a handful who never call stuff in, call stuff in late or call the next day. I can't imagine some of our coaches using e-mail. Last week, one of my reporters essentially showed a football coach how to use Google. I'm not forcing our coaches anywhere near a keyboard. That could be a disaster.

 

I'm really waiting for the day when we call a coach for information, and he/she says, "I'm sorry. I can't answer your questions over the phone. Can you e-mail them to me?"
But maybe that's because I can be a spiteful person, and that's what I'd be tempted to do if I were a coach.

 

I'll be honest. It probably takes me longer to decode an e-mail than it does to take the results down over the phone. Especially since the coaches that do e-mail tend to think they're fucking Tolstoy and write this long drawn out summary.

It would prevent something like what happened here last week. ASE was on the phone with a coach for a half-hour and nearly made us late. I wanted to knock his damn goatee down his throat.

 

I hate e-mail results. Fax 'em please.

Calls are fine, but please have everything in front of you and ready. That's all I ask. It shouldn't take 20 minutes to take your softball game.

I never take track results over the phone. Too much time involved. I don't mind typing track results, but damn is it physically hard on the hands and wrists when you're doing a lot of it. I wish track results computer programs would follow wrestling's lead and offer an APstyle or something close version of the results for use by the media.

As far as coaches and stat people strictly reporting by electronic means, I think we're probably a generation away or maybe more from that happening with any reasonable degree of success.

And to the OP...this probably has nothing to do with making your job easier and everything to do with eliminating "data entry" positions if they can get away with it.

 

That's the way to do it. People resist change as it is, so go slow with them for crying out loud.

 

Please print that reply for your ME and also this reply.
You are a stupid, clueless moron.
How many coaches are going to spell names right? If they are on the phone, you can question them. What coaches are going to spell names right? This is a dumb policy and example with an ME with too much time on his hands. Tell him to improve his shit news section and lay off sports. Dumbass.

 

Lucky you, eh?

I often wonder how management types actually get to BE management types.