Phone calls

Have I said lately that I have a lot of fun at work? There's plenty of work and stress involved, but there is always something going on in the newsroom to keep me entertained. Thanks to this job I now know about the duck song  and Marcel the shell.

But here's the funny thing I have to share with you today.

The first thing: People will call newsrooms with all kinds of questions.

A sports editor I worked with used to complain about drunks calling from bars to settle bets, but I think what happened on Tuesday night takes the cake for newsroom calls.

A week or two ago, we ran a story about a disease affecting bats, called white-nose syndrome. On Tuesday we get a call from a guy asking what he should do about a bat that is in his house (not totally clear on where the bat was but the guy said it wouldn't go away). The student that took the call has a pretty loud voice so people in the newsroom heard his side of the conversation.

Here's what we heard:

"So you're calling because we ran a story about white-nose bats?"

"You have a bat that won't leave?"

"Did you call animal control?"

"There are probably bat removal services."

"I see, so you don't want to kill the bat, you just want to get rid of it."

"This is a newspaper, so we don't really deal with bats. Have you tried the conservation department?"


The whole conversation lasted about 10 minutes with each comment by the student followed by laughter in the newsroom. My stomach hurt when it was over. I am impressed the staffer was able to carry on the conversation without busting out laughing.

Is this what people did before the Internet? Call newsrooms looking for answers?