Calling the Newsroom
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We heard from some of you and thought we would share a couple of emails:
Scott,
I have called many a news department without a phone answered, OR it is answered after multiple attempts.
What is most disturbing is once a human answers the phone they are often abrupt and dismissive as though I am completely disrupting their work. Forget being a person calling in about legit news.
To this I say:
What if an important, high paying "client" was trying to reach someone about their commercials?
What if the employee or relative of the station's BIGGEST client called, trying to communicate a story or wanting to find out where to send a press release?
What if an important community official called to either offer a story, report news, or just trying to reach someone in the newsroom?
Ya never know who is on the other end of the phone. How dare anyone call in the middle of Tik Tok dance recording or rehearsal! LOL
Email:
In regards to the story, “Answer the Phone” –
As someone who has worked overnights for nearly two decades, I completely understand why FOX 5 and other stations don’t answer the phone after hours. Even on a normal night, it feels like the phone is constantly ringing with calls from crazy people and people asking questions about things they could have simply googled the answer to. It often feels like I’m running a full time help desk. And as someone who is trying to produce a show, it makes it very hard to get work done. I wish, almost nightly, that our station would take our newsroom number off the website. I often think it must take people longer to look our number up and call us than it would be to just google the answer to their question. I would estimate that less than 1% of phone calls generate any legitimate tip or information. Any real news maker either has direct contacts to producers/reporters or they will email the newsroom.
The amount of manpower and time it takes to deal with all the phone calls is not worth the reward of once in a blue moon getting a legitimate tip. It’s not worth the cost.
Ideally, someone would be staffing the assignment desk 24/7 to handle phone calls. But we all know that’s not happening.
Email:
It’s because they don’t care anymore.
They have their BS agenda for sucking up to advertisers and the stupid features they do and that’s it. Spot news? Forget it, unless it’s weather. I tried calling four Cleveland stations one day with video of a car-truck collision that just happened—flames, drivers escaping their vehicles, firetrucks arriving.
I literally never got through to anyone at any of the stations. The video was never used.
