On Mondays, my main voice-mail is usually nearly full. It holds about 35 calls, so if I have more than 30, I know something went wrong during the weekend.
I can tell what interests people by the number of calls. Comics would be the all-time winner, followed by people eager to point out a blatant error. Congratulations usually come slowly.
But in July, Detroit’s 300th birthday celebration and the tall ships generated a deluge of calls to the Free Press newsroom.
I’d have to categorize these as positive calls because people were calling the newspaper to find out information they couldn’t get elsewhere. We were being useful, even to people who might not have been readers.
“We got the tall ships like you wouldn’t believe,’ said Barbara Woolf-Packard, one of several metro desk editorial assistants. “It was like the tall ship hot line.”
She said the phones on the metro desk rang virtually all day each day the tall ships were a part of the celebration. The telephone tsunami started about July 16 and slowed after the ships sailed away more than a week later.
That was somewhat puzzling to the newsroom, because we ran lots of information on the ships. Each day starting July 16, we detailed the ships’ route, the best spots to view them, the times for tours along the Detroit and Windsor waterfront, and other information and stories. On July 18, we ran a full-page “Ahoy, Detroit” graphic that described each ship and where it would be docked.
Yet, the calls kept coming.
Woolf-Packard said people seeking tall ships information more than doubled the regular call volume on the metro desk. And the desk gets hundreds a day regularly. The phone rang most of the time, she said, from early morning to about 7:30-8 p.m.
Editorial assistants are used to handling lots of calls.
Among the usual: calls about obituaries and death notices; people calling about not getting their morning newspaper; Free Press reporters trying to reach their assignment editors; news tips; questions for other Free Press departments, and general questions from all sorts of people.
In addition to telephone calls, the newsroom also received e-mails and letters about Detroit 300 coverage.
Photographer Kyle Keener, who made the portraits for the July 25 birthday card front page headlined “We Are Detroit,” said he has never before gotten such a positive response from the public about his newspaper work. One reader said: “This is the first time in forever that I’ve so enjoyed reading and seeing the front and back page of the paper. My favorite subject is portraits. You captured the spirit of the city …the people that make a complex city personal…. ”
The Free Press staff’s excitement showed in the breadth, verve and detail of daily coverage. We vicariously felt readers’ excitement through the many ways they told us so.
My voice-mail awaits.
