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Unplug the phones

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by ColbertNation, Apr 22, 2009.

  1. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    That is a great question. The cluelessness of most ME's is beyond comprehension. The fact these individuals are not making THAT much money and are highly-ridiculed butt kissers makes me think they were picked on in the playground and last picked to play sports, etc., as kids.
    The ME mentioned in this thread must be a fucking idiot.
     
  2. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    OK, well here's the thing. We thought about this at our shop. Never implemented it. Not enough time to inform coaches, etc. All of you who are saying "it's lazy" are missing the point.

    In our shop (35K daily), we've been slashed from seven people to 4.2 people in the last year (don't ask about the .2). We are not allowed to hire part-timers to answer phones, and by law, you can't have freelancers in the office taking phoners as a substitute for being out writing a story.

    It becomes an issue of manpower. We still have to put out a paper, and we still have to write the stories. Now you're taking your writing manpower and turning it into taking calls, and taking calls, in the spring, is a full-time shift. You aren't getting anything else done. The phone never stops from about 7 to 11. To help ease that issue, we've asked coaches to e-mail stuff in when possible and leave a contact number at the bottom for more information if need be. I wish we had the luxury of having more than one person man the phones most nights, but we don't. It's become a major problem.
     
  3. jps

    jps Active Member

    there he is.
     
  4. renaldo

    renaldo New Member

    We cover about 30 high schools and the phones ring non-stop in the spring. It's insane between 6-8 p.m. The first cuts in our department were with our phone clerks, so the staffers spend all their time answering phones.

    However, to mandate something like this cold turkey is plain suicide. We've gone the route of "heavy encouragement" to fax or e-mail, and even many of the old-timers are taking that route for reporting results. They're starting to see it takes much less time to report results with the push of a button than to make phone calls to five different papers.

    Like many of you have said, though, much of the information is incomplete. To help with that, we've started to e-mail and fax sample scoresheets to all the schools. They can use that as a template to report results.

    By taking the "see, this works for you too" approach instead of the "we refuse to take phone calls" approach, the benefits have been obvious. By no means is it a perfect system, but given the many prep sports challenges in general it's been working out OK.
     
  5. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    This is the perfect answer to this problem. But many or most ME's in today's climate have to be big shots and say, 'My way or the highway.'
    Seriously, this is the perfect aproach to the problem.
     
  6. greenlantern

    greenlantern Guest

    Whether it's by phone or e-mail, someone still has to clean the scores up for agate. I think it's easier by phone because you get all the information you need right then and can format it right then. If the e-mail isn't complete, then you have to track down the coach for that information.
     
  7. trench

    trench Member

    At my old shop, where I was prep editor, I eventually (an unsuccessfully) advocated some drastic changes that included email-only submissions from coaches. Reasons were many but the main one was simply that our manpower to handle calls was ever-shrinking and the call volume was ever-growing. The result became copy editors having to take calls, which shouldn't happen, calls being on hold for way too long, hang-ups from those holds, too many of the aforementioned "clueless teenage girls" who were doing the math on totals during the call instead of before (making calls last way too long), not to mention our own call-takers would come and go so fast they rarely had enough experience to do the job right themselves. In other words, a big problem that was only going to get bigger. Email-only policy would have solved most of the issues. Coaches would have adapted. It was for the betterment of the product, not just the convenience of the paper. We had 50-plus schools in our area.
     
  8. Some Guy

    Some Guy Active Member

    I'm actually not completely against this policy. I don't think it should be so Draconian ("email, or fuck you"), but I think coaches should be strongly encouraged to use email. If I were a coach, I would prefer to do it this way. I hate talking on the phone.

    The biggest catch I can see: If you're, say, a baseball coach, and you want to report an away game, you have to wait until you get back to your school computer to email (I'm assuming most bumfuck baseball coaches don't have Blackberries). So you probably aren't going to make the paper's deadline.

    I think coaches should still be allowed to call in away games, or night games, but strongly encouraged to email everything else. It's easier for everyone, I'd think
     
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