ETSU & cutting someone some slack

I think I’ve said it here before, but I love sitting at my desk and going through wire copy. It’s not that I didn’t keep up with the news. I always have, but it was delayed, whether by a few hours or days.
Wednesday afternoon, ETSU (EAST Tennessee State University, and I’ll explain the caps in a moment) officially announced the location of its soon-to-be-built football stadium. We streamed it live on the internet.

That’s a pretty big coup for WCYB.

(In fact, we did it again on Friday, when Dolly Parton announced what’ll be new for the 30th season of Dollywood.)

I’ve written about ETSU before in several stories. I usually start with the full name & then abbreviate. I even go to the Web site and link to it, to offer WCYB.com readers a little something extra (and to offer the news source a little free publicity). Unfortunately, instead of writing East I wrote Eastern.

Okay, I was wrong. Nobody said anything for awhile. Probably didn’t even notice (or know).

Then, some big, crazy fan (who also tries to make money off other fans, if you read his profile), noticed and complained. Note to big, crazy fan: I’ll do better by you next time, but get off my ass. (Luckily, I’m anonymous to the public, at least at this point). I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve done worse.

Okay, I learned. I’m grateful nobody else thought it was so horrible. Not even co-workers. I hadn’t even heard of the university before I moved to the Tri-Cities. (Have any of you?)

Of course, I changed Eastern to East right away. The only other time Eastern appeared was in a keyword (that is private & unpublished) in the program that puts stories on WCYB.com. I fixed that one, too.

The boss and sports guy-turned-anchor felt the need to apologize. I understand. They’re happy with me, but want to be on the record with readers on social media. It won’t happen again. (They even blamed it on the new guy from Miami!)

Unfortunately, a few hours later, that very same night, I hadn’t learned my lesson. I was reading an email from Twitter about some popular tweets in my network. (I haven’t stayed up-to-date with Facebook, Twitter, and several other things since I started working again.)

One of the stories was a tweet from President Obama. He used an apostrophe in “its” (the possessive, not the contraction for “it is”) when he shouldn’t have. I immediately grabbed a screen shot and mentioned it in my own tweet. I didn’t cut him any slack, like I would’ve appreciated from that ETSU fanatic.

Sorry, Mr. President. (On this, at least.)

I have an update to this blog, a few hours after I posted it. I was trying to change my address for the Florida Retirement System, especially with the end of the quarter coming up. Couldn’t do it online and remember reading the employer has to do it. So I emailed Miami-Dade County Public Schools (which brags that it’s the 4th largest district in the country), even though I haven’t worked for them in years. That’s when I suddenly got this garbage vacation message:

Yes, I tweeted it out for a response! Will be close instead of will be closed? (Click on the picture to make it bigger.) What’s wrong with that person? The writer may not be a teacher, but he or she represents the school system at a time when school systems are under attack. (See my blogs here and here for details.) Fox News even has a segment called “Trouble With Schools” as if nothing good goes on.

Yes, I know what I wrote earlier today, but this nonsense from this particular source is ongoing. But it could’ve been worse. At least I didn’t have to read about Jesus or biblical quotes under emailed work messages from school system employees, like I did for seven years. Somebody should police that.

I’ll certainly let you know when I hear back from M-DCPS, and I’m pretty sure I will. They’re all over Twitter wearing rose-colored glasses at @mdcps.

It’s the next night and I have an update. I’m shocked M-DCPS hasn’t responded yet. Maybe they’re all on spring break. (And they couldn’t save that for two weeks until Passover to save all the Jewish kids from having to bring matzah to school.) I’m especially shocked because my friend Stacy found something else wrong with that awful vacation-reply email!

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