Check out this plea from the WF paper

[injuredinmelee]

From the bullpen, May 7

May 7, 2007

pictureI'd really like to tell you how thrilling the Iowa Park baseball series was this weekend, but there's only one problem.

We never heard from them. Had to get scores from another media outlet.

I shouldn't signal out one school, though.

On Friday night, this paper was expecting 11 playoff games to be phoned in. With limited resources, we aren't able to cover every game that we'd like to.

So it was frustrating to be sitting in the office ready to write stories on area games, only to never hear the phone ring.

We heard from three coaches, and only two of those came by our deadline (11 p.m.). But not everyone was anti-media.

Petrolia's Alisha Franklin called after playing a night-time doubleheader. So did Burkburnett's Allen Hennan on Saturday.

They should be commended, but they were the minority.

So in this space today, I'm going to make a plea to baseball coaches, softball coaches and even athletic directors.

Kids work their tails off all year long and, win or lose, they deserve their names in the paper.

A couple of coaches admitted they forgot - nobody's perfect and that's understandable.

Others decided it was OK to call in a full series a day or two after some of the games had been played. To that I beg - please call in every game immediately afterward. If you're hours away from home, a quick ring from a cell phone will do the trick.

Our phone numbers are (940) 720-3470 or 1-800-627-1646. If you're afraid you may get caught up in the moment afterward, have another coach or your AD give us a ring.

We'd like to do a better job covering the playoffs this weekend. But we need your help, too.

- Zach Duncan

[Milk That Cow]

There are a lot of coaches who are guilty of not gettings results to the Local papers and radio stations...

It ain't that hard...

[GreenMonster]

Zach Duncan is a poor excuse for a sports writer. Instead of writing this article whinning about the area coaches he should have been trying to get a phone number from them. That way he can do more than just sit there and wait for someone else to do his job for him. Instead, he decides to write this article and send it to press making the area coaches look like asses. Way to go genius, alienate your best source of info. A good sports writer wouldn't be sitting by the phone with his thumb in his rear, he would be trying anything he could think of to get the info he needed.

[Adidas410s]

Originally posted by GreenMonster
Zach Duncan is a poor excuse for a sports writer. Instead of writing this article whinning about the area coaches he should have been trying to get a phone number from them. That way he can do more than just sit there and wait for someone else to do his job for him. Instead, he decides to write this article and send it to press making the area coaches look like asses. Way to go genius, alienate your best source of info. A good sports writer wouldn't be sitting by the phone with his thumb in his rear, he would be trying anything he could think of to get the info he needed.

Here's a thought...maybe he should get their phone numbers and call them!!! :doh:

[GreenMonster]

Originally posted by Adidas410s
Here's a thought...maybe he should get their phone numbers and call them!!! :doh:

That would seem to be a better solution than writing and article lambasting them for not calling him. The nerve of this friggin guy......SHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!!!!!

[injuredinmelee]

I know when i was in WF for the Wylie/IP game last year there was not a single mention of the game in the WF paper.

[Adidas410s]

I decided to send this little e-mail off to our buddy Zach....

Zach,

After reading your article this morning, I am left with one question to ask; are you incapable of contacting your local teams to 1) ask for their cell phone/contact number 2) ask for the game times...add about 3 hours to allow them to take care of post game activities and 3) give them a call at that time to ask for information about the game? Maybe it's just me...but I would think that if you were truly concerned with reporting on these games (read: doing your job) that you might consider taking a proactive stance in gathering the necessary information (read: doing your job) so that you can, as you stated in your article, recognize the kids who "worked their tail off...(and) deserve their names in the paper." Writing an article that is negative will do nothing but alienate you from those who you depend on to be able to write your articles. Without the communication and cooperation of coaches and administrators at area schools, you just might find that you'll have a very hard time covering high school sports for the entire area in the future.

Regards,

[tuff26]

I did not know coaches were sports writers?

[Txbroadcaster]

Originally posted by tuff26
I did not know coaches were sports writers?

They are not..But for newspapers that dont have 40 staff writers the coaches, are the lifeblood of information.

And Adidias is right..DID he TRY to contact the coaches? If he did he should have put it in the article.

[GreenMonster]

Originally posted by Txbroadcaster
They are not..But for newspapers that dont have 40 staff writers the coaches, are the lifeblood of information.

And Adidias is right..DID he TRY to contact the coaches? If he did he should have put it in the article.

This is typical of the WF Times and Record News. Like Injured stated earlier, last football season I had to go to the Abilene paper's web site to get the write up of the Wylie - IP game last fall. What was worse was that 2 of the WF schools were playing each other (read 1 sportswriter needed) and the other was playing at FW Everman and the WF paper asked the Star Tribune to cover it for them (read 0 sportswriters needed). Granted the game of the week in the area was 2A Holliday vs 1A Windthorst (read 1 sportswriter needed) and the only other game of any significance was Wylie vs IP 10 miles west of the newspaper office. Not a mention not even a box score was available for this game in the WF Rag. Abilene sent a reporter 150 miles to cover the game and WF gave someone the night off from travel to stay in the office and help answer phones from reports of other games. Pretty pathetic huh.

[Odis]

Now, now fellow Iowa Parkians. We all know that the WF Times Record News has been renamed the WF Rider Raider News, they are the only local team that is going to get a fair amount of coverage. Nick, Andy and Zach have fallen onto the Roho train and can't get off. It's not their fault. We should show more compassion. Jees, don't you realize how hard it is to make a phone call? Come on!

[injuredinmelee]

Originally posted by Odis
Now, now fellow Iowa Parkians. We all know that the WF Times Record News has been renamed the WF Rider Raider News, they are the only local team that is going to get a fair amount of coverage. Nick, Andy and Zach have fallen onto the Roho train and can't get off. It's not their fault. We should show more compassion. Jees, don't you realize how hard it is to make a phone call? Come on!

Nick used to have the biggest man crush on Burk back in the late 80's and early 90's.

[pirate4state]

Originally posted by Adidas410s
I decided to send this little e-mail off to our buddy Zach....

Zach,

After reading your article this morning, I am left with one question to ask; are you incapable of contacting your local teams to 1) ask for their cell phone/contact number 2) ask for the game times...add about 3 hours to allow them to take care of post game activities and 3) give them a call at that time to ask for information about the game? Maybe it's just me...but I would think that if you were truly concerned with reporting on these games (read: doing your job) that you might consider taking a proactive stance in gathering the necessary information (read: doing your job) so that you can, as you stated in your article, recognize the kids who "worked their tail off...(and) deserve their names in the paper." Writing an article that is negative will do nothing but alienate you from those who you depend on to be able to write your articles. Without the communication and cooperation of coaches and administrators at area schools, you just might find that you'll have a very hard time covering high school sports for the entire area in the future.

Regards,

Let us know if he responds!!! :thumbsup:

[Macarthur]

The WF Times Record News is without question the worst rag of a newspaper in North America. And I am not joking one bit when I say that. It truly is an embarassment.

[Adidas410s]

Originally posted by pirate4state
Let us know if he responds!!! :thumbsup:

nothing as of now. I'm not that surprised though...

[Chopblock]

I remember 12 years ago, i lived in the Falls town, they had a call in sports show on cable tv, they were looking for the Turkey of the Year Award, I called and nominated Gholson, I was told that I should be the Turkey, by the people on the show, I called back and nominated THEM
They were pissed

[Matthew328]

Gholson is a pompus ass.....he's not worth anything....and yes the WF paper blows...

[Macarthur]

Originally posted by Matthew328
Gholson is a pompus ass.....he's not worth anything....and yes the WF paper blows...

And it's interesting because what in the world does he have to be cocky about?

[Adidas410s]

I finally got a response from them:


Sorry for just now responding to your e-mail. I was in Austin almost all last week, and am now returning to the office.

First, I had no intentions of my article coming off as negative. My purpose in writing it was to maybe get some coaches' attention ( I also talked to some via the phone later that week) about the need to report scores.

Let me answer your questions real quick. Yes, we do have cell phone numbers on 100 percent of city coaches - and probably 65-75 percent of area coaches. And yes, we do call the ones we have (I have talked it over with others at the paper about making it a priority to get every coach and assistant coach's cell phone number from all 30 or so area high schools for next year).

Here's a problem we have. Of course we wait until after we think the game is over to call them. One problem I have found is some coaches forget to turn their cell phones back on after games.

And with the playoffs starting, more teams travel to far places like Mineral Wells and Eastland, Cisco, Plainview, etc - where there's very little cell phone service along the way.

So even if we try to call a coach, and they have their cell phone on, if they're in the middle of nowhere, we can't get a hold of them.

We almost always are able to track down the scores - we'll call other papers that have teams involved, etc. - but when the playoffs start, we think it's important enough to write short stories on all area teams. So it puts us in a big bind if we put aside one whole page for local sports stories, and then only three games get called in.

Here's an example from that weekend. City View's coach - who was excellent about reporting games all year long and one of the first we usually hear from- hasn't called in his game and it's getting close to deadline. So we give him a ring. He's busy - can't give a linescore (they happened to lose) or any info except final score and quote. We remind him to please call the next day with everything. They're playing Game 2 at something around 1 p.m. in the Metroplex.

So on Saturday, it's about 10 p.m. We haven't called him yet because they may have played twice and it's a two-hour drive back into town. So there's a possibility - if they won Game 2 - that they're just returning to WF.

Again, he said he could just give a score - a 1-0 loss in Game 2. No standouts, no linescore. They were probably back in WF around 7 p.m. at the latest. And I know he's probably really upset they lost, but all it takes is a 5-minute call - one he would have made in a red-hot minute if they had won.

Like I said, I didn't intend to tick off anybody. And from what I hear (I was in Austin, not in the office) we had more coaches call this week, including the IP baseball coach - the only one I really mentioned in my story.

I can promise I wasn't just sitting around the other night twiddling my thumbs, waiting for scores to come in. And I can also promise you that next year, we will have every cell number for every area coach in every sport so as to better our product.

And on the topic of Dorian Dargan, he's an amazing kid. A really, really smart guy who will succeed in anything he does. I was glad to be able to get to know him the past couple of years.

Thanks for reading, and sorry to write such a long response. Have a nice day.

Zach Duncan

[pirate4state]

When I was in HS (many moons ago) I would call in the scores/linescores as the team statistician. :nerd: I guess most coaches have gone away from that? Oh well!

[Ranger Mom]

Originally posted by pirate4state
When I was in HS (many moons ago) I would call in the scores/linescores as the team statistician. :nerd: I guess most coaches have gone away from that? Oh well!

I think that is a good idea though....the coach should appoint someone to call in with the stats and other relevant info!