You can’t please everyone

Scott Loftis

It might be hard for some of you dear readers to believe, but sometimes we get angry phone calls and visitors at the newspaper office.

It usually doesn’t take long to tell when I’ve got a “live one.” Most people who are calling to yell at me don’t waste much time on pleasantries like “hello.”

I got a call like that last week. I answered the main line into the office and the woman on the other end identified herself and said she was from Huntington. She said she had a complaint about our sports section but I interrupted her and asked: “Where is Huntington?”

There was a brief moment of silence before she said in a much more timid tone: “I’ve called the wrong newspaper.”

Of course, that was the rare exception. Most people who call to pick a bone with me or with the paper aren’t so easily satisfied. Of course, criticism comes with the job and I don’t mind having a discussion with anyone. But there’s a difference between something in the newspaper being inaccurate and something being printed — especially in this space or on this particular page — that a reader doesn’t happen to agree with.

A couple of years ago, a local gentleman stopped in our office to renew his subscription. He explained that he normally pays for a year’s worth of papers, but this time he was only paying for six months because at some point in the previous year we’d had a smaller-than-normal paper and hadn’t had room to publish the detention center intake log. We ran it the next week, but that didn’t satisfy this gentleman. He also was irate that we didn’t have such-and-such obituary. I tried to explain that obituaries are sent to us by funeral homes and we can’t run an obituary that we haven’t received.

“Well, if you had any decent reporters, you’d know who died!” our angry subscriber responded.

He then told me how he doesn’t like my column, because I write things that he disagrees with. I responded as I do to anyone who offers that particular criticism: “You don’t have to like it.”

At some point I gave up and returned to my office. Our longtime publisher, Bob Moore, had gotten involved by that point and by the time the gentleman left, Bob had won him over. For the moment.

Shortly after we moved into office space in Hickory Ridge Plaza early this year, I came back from an errand to find an ancient, rusty pickup truck in the parking lot, spread out over a space and a half. This happened after a heavy snow and I had to park with half my vehicle on a pile of snow.

As I was getting out of the car, the owner of the truck came out of our office, scowled in my direction, rearranged some assorted junk in the back of the truck, then backed out, almost ran into my car, and went on his way.

When I got inside, our office manager, Melody Strodtman, told me that was the same gentleman I’d encountered a year or two earlier. He apparently had remembered me, too.

“That guy who just bought the paper is an idiot,” he had told Melody.

But after he grudgingly renewed his subscription, Melody was able to change the subject and he was in a good mood by the time he left.

If you’re reading today, sir, I have some good news for you. This is one of our “tightest” papers of the year, meaning we don’t have a lot of space for news content. But I had you in mind as I made the intake logs a priority. As for the obituaries, I never said I was a decent reporter.

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Scott Loftis is editor and publisher of the Carroll County News. His email address is SLoftis@CarrollCoNews. com.