Unhappy preps

[moonlight]

I've had parents tell me that it's a sport because it's on ESPN. I guess I'll be running poker tournament agate any day now. ::)

Not to mention darts, dominoes and the national spelling bee.

 

[moonlight]

These people are readers. You need to treat them with respect. If you were buying something from a store, would you want the clerk to tell you to **** off?

It's pretty rare that a high school athlete would seriously ask why their team or sport isn't covered more.

If they are serious you may explain the problems (they had a swim meet on a night you covered four basketball playoffs, for example).

Or the level of interest -- we just can't cover every soccer game but if you can talk to the coach and make sure we get a call or email, we can make sure to have a writeup in the paper.

Ask if there is anything going on with the team that would make a good story. Explain what that might be -- record-setting athletes, angles like milestone victories, winning while coach is in the hospital, etc., etc.

Make them thing of their team/sport in terms of stories rather than just getting covered for the sake of generic coverage.

You might find a story. You might enlighten a student and have a reader down the road.

Of course, if it is someone just being a jackass, you could always say you are waiting for them to win a game before you cover them.

I agree with most of your response, but my experience is that the readers/athletes/parents who complain aren't asking for an occasional feature or notebook on their team. They want it to be treated like football or basketball.

 

[ColbertNation]

Never had an athlete get in my face about coverage. In my experience, high school athletes rarely care about getting their names or pictures in the paper. It's the parents that want to see it. I've actually had parents insist that newspaper coverage can be a factor in whether or not their kid gets into college.
High school sports would be awesome if there were no parents.

 

[HejiraHenry]

Thirty years, I've had one school-age athlete say anything about coverage issues.

 

[Ace]

These people are readers. You need to treat them with respect. If you were buying something from a store, would you want the clerk to tell you to **** off?

It's pretty rare that a high school athlete would seriously ask why their team or sport isn't covered more.

If they are serious you may explain the problems (they had a swim meet on a night you covered four basketball playoffs, for example).

Or the level of interest -- we just can't cover every soccer game but if you can talk to the coach and make sure we get a call or email, we can make sure to have a writeup in the paper.

Ask if there is anything going on with the team that would make a good story. Explain what that might be -- record-setting athletes, angles like milestone victories, winning while coach is in the hospital, etc., etc.

Make them thing of their team/sport in terms of stories rather than just getting covered for the sake of generic coverage.

You might find a story. You might enlighten a student and have a reader down the road.

Of course, if it is someone just being a jackass, you could always say you are waiting for them to win a game before you cover them.

I agree with most of your response, but my experience is that the readers/athletes/parents who complain aren't asking for an occasional feature or notebook on their team. They want it to be treated like football or basketball.

Then you just have to lay out the facts. If they are a wrestling parent and get 20 people to the matches while football/basketball get 500-2000, you explain that the general interest isn't there to cover it that way, but you will take all results and are always on the lookout for good stories on any sport.

Now if it is unusual -- like a champion track team or wrestling team that fills the gym, maybe you are the one who needs the enlightening.

Some of my best stories have come from listening to people's complaints and mining for ideas. You have to get them past, "our kids play hard too" and "you write about them, why not us."

You have to say, what would you write about the team? What's newsworthy. Stop them if they compare it to another sport or talk about the team in general.

No, that's not a story. We don't write about everyone. Keep trying.

It works most of the time. Either they do have an interesting story or they realize that they don't have any complaint.

 

[JBHawkEye]

You might get a couple of kids who whine to you, but that's because they think they're better than they actually are.

I actually had a Class A minor-league baseball player complain to me when I came into the clubhouse before a game to do a feature on the guy on the team who was in contention for the league's Triple Crown and who had hit three home runs (one to each field) the night before. I told him when he started putting up numbers like this guy, I'd talk to him. His response, a witty one: "**** you."

My favorite complaint of the year: Supporters of one of the local high school girls basketball teams say a.) we don't shoot photos of their team, then b.) we only shoot photos of one athlete, then c.) the strobes our photographers were using were bothering the players.

With some people, you can never win.

 

[Ace]

My favorite is when you do cover the team they lose and the parents complain that you covered that game out of spite.

Yes, we have a secret stash of stealth reporters who are assigned to write about your team only if you lose. They chortle and chuckle while ripping your players and also attach mean-spirited headlines.

 

[ColbertNation]

I had a parent complain that: "You only cover our team when they lose."
I wanted to explain to her that Carnac the Magnificent was no longer employed by our paper, and that we had no way of knowing who was going to win or lose.

 

[expendable]

My favorite complaint of the year: Supporters of one of the local high school girls basketball teams say a.) we don't shoot photos of their team, then b.) we only shoot photos of one athlete, then c.) the strobes our photographers were using were bothering the players.

With some people, you can never win.

I was shooting a girls basketball game one night and had a fan come up and demanded I stop taking photos, because of the strobe. I tried to reason with him, and showed him that becuase of my limited phototaking ability, most of my shots came after the ball left the shooter's hands, and that I would only be there for a quarter at most. It wasn't a good enough explination for him and he literally tried to jerk the camera off my neck when a police officer stepped in and ushered him back to his seat.

After the game the home coach asked me about it and then asked who the guy was. Girls basketball draws maybe 50 fans (parents) on a week night, and the guy was a fan of the home team, but apparently nobody knew who he was.

 

[boots]

Sounds like you had a nut job. Here's boots' golden rule. Treat me with respect and you will get respect. Treat me like an ass and I'll become like my nickname, "The ultimate ass".

 

[Ace]

Sounds like you had a nut job. Here's boots' golden rule. Treat me with respect and you will get respect. Treat me like an ass and I'll become like my nickname, "The ultimate ass".

That's your nickname? I'm sorry. I thought it was your quest.

 

[boots]

Sounds like you had a nut job. Here's boots' golden rule. Treat me with respect and you will get respect. Treat me like an ass and I'll become like my nickname, "The ultimate ass".

That's your nickname? I'm sorry. I thought it was your quest.

Actually its one of the same.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

I had a parent complain that: "You only cover our team when they lose."
I wanted to explain to her that Carnac the Magnificent was no longer employed by our paper, and that we had no way of knowing who was going to win or lose.

I get that a lot.
I tell them that we have a televsion at the office that gets ESPN, but not ESP.

 

[boots]

I had a parent complain that: "You only cover our team when they lose."
I wanted to explain to her that Carnac the Magnificent was no longer employed by our paper, and that we had no way of knowing who was going to win or lose.

I get that a lot.
I tell them that we have a televsion at the office that gets ESPN, but not ESP.

The worst time of the year is football season when you pick winners. The team you picked to lose, wins and everyone gives you ****. That's why I've never been a favorite of writers picking games. Half the time, they're guessing.

 

[expendable]

I haven't seen him since, and forgot about the incident until JB's post. The best I figured was that he was an out-of-town family member of someone on the team. They went to dinner before the game, had a few drinks and he worked up some courage. I knew the family he was sitting around, but they never mentioned it, so just dropped it.

I try not to be an ass (even if they are). I've found that most of the time parents tend to back off after I show a willingness to talk with them.

 

[expendable]

I had a parent complain that: "You only cover our team when they lose."
I wanted to explain to her that Carnac the Magnificent was no longer employed by our paper, and that we had no way of knowing who was going to win or lose.

I get that a lot.
I tell them that we have a televsion at the office that gets ESPN, but not ESP.

The worst time of the year is football season when you pick winners. The team you picked to lose, wins and everyone gives you ****. That's why I've never been a favorite of writers picking games. Half the time, they're guessing.

True that. I refuse to pick football games. It's like arguing with the wife. It's a no-win situation.

 

[alleyallen]

Ace was right about his assertion that before we just tell people to slag off, to maybe try reasoning or see if there's actually something there. I had a local church league basketball team call me up asking for a story. My first instinct was to tell them to hit the road. But after asking two questions, I realized there was a story there.

This church team hadn't lost a game since like 1977. And a large majority of current players (not to mention several former players) were also players on the local high school basketball team, which by itself was pretty damned good.

In all, for a community newspaper, it was a nice story that gave some coverage to a group which usually doesn't even get listed in the community calendar.

 

[beardown]

It's hard to win this argument. I've always tried to be professional as much as possible. There's nothing good that comes out of it if mom/dad/superjock gets really pissed and then calls your boss. Yes, he/she may side with you, and most of of the time, we're right. But sometimes behavior can turn things the wrong way quickly.

At my first job out of school 10 years ago, I had a parent scream at me for not covering the city little league championship when the local high school baseball team competed in the state semifinals. After hearing her yell at me, I hung up. She bypassed everyone and called my publisher. She didn't complain about our lack of little league coverage. She bitched about me hanging up on her. So I got in trouble for hanging up on a customer, which wasn't the original issue.

I say, hear them out. Don't promise anything but maybe it's a story idea "to consider and I'll talk about with my editor/staff." That at least deflates the moment and allows you to do your job.

 

[alleyallen]

Since we're sharing stories...

Working at small-town paper #1 several years ago when Michael Bishop and K-State faced A&M in the Big-12 title game. Bishop, a local high school legend, had like six touchdowns in that game but a turnover in overtime cost K-State the conference title.

Now because we're a small-town paper, we were going to use AP's cap of the game and do a locally-written follow-up a day or so later. However, some unidentified ex-coach called me up and demanded that I call Bishop a choker on the front page of sports. I calmly told him I wasn't going to do that because a) he really wasn't a choker (he was second in Heisman voting beyond, of all people, Ricky Williams) and b) that's an editorial comment that has no place in the story.

The guy railed at me for a while, asked my full name, then said he was going to find out where I lived and he was going to kill me.

Never mind the criminal aspect of that phone call. Sometimes, no matter what happens, you just aren't going to win.

 

[Ace]

Since we're sharing stories...

Working at small-town paper #1 several years ago when Michael Bishop and K-State faced A&M in the Big-12 title game. Bishop, a local high school legend, had like six touchdowns in that game but a turnover in overtime cost K-State the conference title.

Now because we're a small-town paper, we were going to use AP's cap of the game and do a locally-written follow-up a day or so later. However, some unidentified ex-coach called me up and demanded that I call Bishop a choker on the front page of sports. I calmly told him I wasn't going to do that because a) he really wasn't a choker (he was second in Heisman voting beyond, of all people, Ricky Williams) and b) that's an editorial comment that has no place in the story.

The guy railed at me for a while, asked my full name, then said he was going to find out where I lived and he was going to kill me.

Never mind the criminal aspect of that phone call. Sometimes, no matter what happens, you just aren't going to win.

Threatening to kill you because you refused to call a guy a choker is different. I like that.

And in my defense, I was drinking a lot that day and that damn choker cost me a $50 parlay.