letter the tenth: flux capacitor needed for recongn ... recongin ... aw, forget it

This leditor came to a sports editor in Virginia whose paper comes out twice a week. There is still a chance that a midweek editions are floating around, which not only have the date on them but have either "MIDWEEK EDITION" or "WEEKEND EDITION" on the top of the front page in all caps, early Friday mornings.

Grab a bottle of Journo Juice (tequila) and a shot glass.

We're drinking every time the high school's name comes up.

[IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER] Monday: Why don't you do an article on the [SHOT!] JV Football team as they are 4-2 for the year. It would be great for the guys that has worked very hard everyday on the practice field as well as on Wed.(Gamed nights) to get some recongntion since they are have a pretty good year so far. Nothing has been said about the [SHOT!] JV team. We need to support all of our teams in [THE MUNICIPALITY] not the Varsity. The [SHOT!] JV Football team deserves this recognition.

Friday, 8:42 a.m.: Just look today's newspaper and again nothing was mentioned about the [SHOT!] JV football team. Yeah we did lose to [OTHER HIGH SCHOOL ... SHOT ANYWAY!] on Wed.. However our [SHOT!] JV played their hearts out on the field. The score ended up 51-40, I'm hoping that everyone in [THE MUNICIPALITY] will get to read an article soon about our [SHOT!] JV football players. They are 5-3 right now, but they are doing better than Varsity by far. Our [DRUNK YET?] JV football team needs to reconginzed for all their hardwork this football season.




This sports editor said the article was in the weekend edition and, on top of that, the [TAKE A SHOT FOR THE HELL OF IT] junior varsity team had not been ignored previously. They may not have gotten above the fold several photo treatment but they were in there.

I think this situation is easy to decipher: This person does not read the newspaper.  We all know those people. They know everything about current events and "what's really" going on and are the first to complain about a newspaper not having an article or not getting "the whole story." Then, when you question them about it, they backpedal to "Such and such told me and he/she takes the paper and it said. ..." Then you get the article in question and it doesn't say that at all. Or, better still, it's a leditor that actually gets to the OPINION page.

It reminds me of an e-mail I wish I still had. A former mayor sent me an angry e-mail with a laundry list of factual errors in my article and, as I went down the list, I came to the realization that she was mentioning things that weren't in the article at all. I e-mailed the former mayor back and, upon reading the article, agreed that the errors did not exist. That's it. No my mistake, no I'm sorry, no anything. I wonder how many people were told how horrible of a writer I was for getting the story wrong before the article was read.

But back to this angry sports fan. There could be another explanation for the disappointment in the sports story not being in the edition that came out BEFORE the game: She is a time traveler and we should be too.  You're right. How dare we not mention a sporting event on Wednesday in the previous Tuesday's paper? How are people supposed to know if it's worth going to the [SHOT!] JV game if we don't tell them the score of the [SHOT] JV game the day before? It was a close match but we should have known that people have far more important things to do than going to a losing game of the [SHOT!] JV Football team so we wasted their time by forcing them to sit through that losing game by not giving a detailed description of what took place at the [SHOT!] JV game from the future. Not the Varsity. NOT THE VARSITY.

Or maybe, on a Friday, you should look for the paper that not only says FRIDAY but WEEKEND EDITION.

And I think you all need to send in more leditors so newspaper readers like these can be reconginzed for all their hardwork for writing them.

[SHOT!]