Ouelly Bully!

I wonder if all of Daily Item's potential advertisers receive personal phone calls from the General Manager, Phil Ouellette. About a week ago, I requested a rate sheet from the Daily Item of Lynn, the finest paper in the land (is that better Phil?). The rate sheet was incredibly confusing, mostly due to my never having done this before. Too many options and no real way to understand how to come up with the price.  This could possibly be by design as they apparently don't want new advertisers, but I'll get to that later.

So, I sent a question back to the advertising department and received no response. They were probably trying to figure out the rate sheet too (That was a joke Phil...).  Sorry readers, I'm trying to teach Phil about the use of humor, so stick with me as we work through this for him.

Instead of receiving an answer from the advertising department, I got a personal e-mail from the General Manager of the Daily Item of Lynn, Phil Ouelette. He asked me to call him and as I knew right away what I was in for, I called immediately. It was really fun and a dialogue I wish you all could have enjoyed right here on this blog. I think most of you agree with me and I would think Phil would be more concerned with learning why. He sounds like a very nice guy, but he apparently forgot that I'm a paying customer/subscriber and had a very odd way of selling advertising in his paper. He kept telling me I need to figure out why I want to advertise in his paper. I thought that was obvious, but I guess he doesn't get it.  He doesn't like that I call him a hack paper. He doesn't like that I asked you all to smack them in the face while exploring Exchange Street. He didn't read my article on Item Santa and he didn't read my article on Henry Collin's editorial. Selective reading, which explains the election coverage a little (Off-color humor, Phil. This can be hard to understand at first).

Bottom line... He doesn't like the way I treat the paper on this blog, so he kindly asked me think about why I want to advertise in his paper and ended the call. He wasn't very helpful about the rate sheet. He didn't seem to want to talk about that at all. I asked him to write a letter to the editor of the Daily Item about the mean bloggers, but he said he wasn't interested in that.  Seems to me... a better use of his time would be a review of the election coverage as compared to ad revenue from the candidates. Actually, what is a General Manager supposed to be doing during the day? I looked this up on the Newspaper Association of America website:

Newspaper Careers in Management: General Manager

Position Summary

• Oversees the overall management of operations, technology, advertising, circulation, production, and business office activities.
• Responsible to a large degree for the profit and loss operations of the paper.

Essential Skills

• Must possess strong people skills, including the ability to motivate personnel to work together toward common goals.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills.
• Keen knowledge of marketing and sales.
• Ability to work, prioritize, and track successfully in a fast-paced environment and under deadlines.

Strong people skills..... Responsible for profit? Hmmm.... Nothing here about embracing free speech or being responsible to subscribers, advertisers, and the community.

Pretty good display of denying a real dialogue in this town. I wish when my customers at my 9-5 called or voiced complaints on twitter, facebook, blogs we could call them and ask them "Why do you want to use our products?" and then hang up on them, but alas... that's no way to run a business (There is no joke in this paragraph, Phil.)

Phil wanted you all to know about all the good the Item is doing for the city. I told him he should advertise that more. Poor thing... he's probably still trying to figure out his rate sheet (and that Phil.... was a joke).

-Corey