Two calls about the rally story already this morning.
The first:
“Hello…you wrote about the anti-war rally in today’s paper.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I see again here that you have accused Moveon.org of having ties to the communist party.”
“Um…no, sir.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No, sir. I didn’t mention Moveon.org anywhere in the piece. The group organizing the rally is The World Can’t Wait. They do have members who are supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party and one of the speakers at the event will be a party member.”
“Oh.”
(He hangs up)
The other:
“Hello. My name is XXXXX and I’m from XXXXX. I am calling about Cindy Sheehan.”
“Okay, sir.”
“Why do you people have to write about her and give her publicity? That’s exactly what she wants and you’re just playing the game with the communists.”
“Well, sir, I spoke to the Gathering of Eagles member about their involvement on Saturday as well. There are going to be a lot of people at the rally and protesting the rally. I think people are going to want to know about it.”
“You are a left wing paper and you’re taking things out of context.”
“…Okay. What is it you think has been taken out of context, sir?”
“You shouldn’t be writing about these communists at all. You should be writing about what the Gathering of Eagles is doing.”
“Well sir, they’re coming to Greensboro because of the anti-war rally. I couldn’t write about Gathering of Eagles without mentioning the rally they’re opposing.”
“You also write that The World Can’t Wait will have ‘exclusive rights to the plaza’ up above your story.”
“Well, they have the permit for the plaza, sir, but I don’t think I did write that above my story. They may have added a timesaver to the story I’m not aware of but…”
“It says it right here. I’m reading it on the computer.”
“Okay, sir. Well, it is true they’re going to have the exclusive rights to demonstrate in the plaza.”
“And this cuss word in this piece is just completely uncalled for.”
(a pause)
“Um…sir…are you reading the Yes Weekly story about the rally or the one in the News & Record?”
“The News & Record!”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t quote anyone as using a curse word. You may have my piece confused with the piece in Yes Weekly. Which website are you on right now?
“The News & Record!”
“Okay. Sir…can you read me the address of the website?”
“‘It’s www.yesweekly.com”
“Okay, sir. That’s the Yes Weekly website. They also wrote a piece about this. But you called the number at the bottom of the story on the News & Record website. I’m Joe Killian. The writer of the Yes Weekly piece is Jordan Green. You can contact him by e-mail through the site.”
“Well, you’re both playing the game with the communists!”
(He hangs up)
8 Comments
April 20, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Funny.
And not such a bad idea… outsourcing phone calls from disgruntled readers? Hmmm.
April 20, 2007 at 4:04 pm
If you start running my phone number under the heading: “For a good scream, call” I’m going to charge Yes Weekly by the minute…
April 20, 2007 at 4:40 pm
What’s also funny is that when Charles Gant returned my call, the first thing he said to me was, “I don’t care much for the News & Record.” I had to point out to him that I didn’t write for the News & Record. Sounds like we need to do some more work to distinguish our brands.
April 20, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Gant also told me he didn’t care for the N&R, before going into what was wrong with your story the day before (not actual problems, just problems he had).
I told him that we weren’t the same company, too.
I don’t think it’s a matter of our brands being distinct — I think anyone can see how they’re different. I think certain people just lump all media together. The guy from this morning — I’m not sure what his problem was, beyond not being able to understand he can’t call any reporter who’s written about anything and hold him accountable for all of the reporting on that subject. I get a lot of that, actually – people want to hold me accountable for things they saw on Fox 8 or WXII.
April 20, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I’ve come to the conclusion that education is failing society in a fundamental way. People have no goddamned idea how newspapers work, or why. Not a clue. Today I argued with a girl over why I couldn’t tell a columnist not to write negatively about the organization she bought an ad for. “I don’t see why you can’t,” she said. “I’m giving you money.”
Maybe it should be part of high school civics. Maybe it should be its own class. But we need to start educating people on the fundamentals of the media – not just journalism classes for students who want to become journalists, but classes for everyone on how to be a reader.
April 21, 2007 at 1:50 pm
High schools have already got their hands full without adding newspaper production and ethics to the curriculum. Had a 16-year-old kid the other day who had no idea what the Holocaust was.
April 21, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Damn fine idea Mr. Lowrance. Also, if people were more informed about how the media is supposed to work then they’d actually get mad when it doesn’t do its job, not when it does.
April 22, 2007 at 2:38 am
Somehow I doubt that was because we’re trying to teach him too much, Joe. Also, I don’t mean just newspaper production and ethics. I mean media ethics and function. I don’t care if they know what a lede is, but they should understand why the press is mentioned in the Constitution; exactly why government of any form isn’t allowed to control content; the difference between articles, opinion, submissions and paid content; the debate over the ethicals styles of print vs. tv vs. new media….
These are all things I’ve seen a massive amount of college students not understand in the slightest. This terrifies me even more than your 16-year-old. The difference is between not knowing important facts, and not understanding the tools to learn those facts.