SFist: This just in: San Francisco International Airport Knows Nothing About Travel

DJTennessee

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:26:34 -0800

@tiffanymSF It might have been because he suspects you are carrying weed in your shoes.

ziarah

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:35:10 -0800

Unfortunately, McCarron behaves this same way to pretty much all reporters. It's worthy of note that, in general, he's able to produce traveler projections for the coming year -- but this year he's not giving up the numbers. We can only guess whether that means they're not good.

SquirrelMaster

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:22:02 -0800

^ Brilliant.

jacksevanroo

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:11:44 -0800

Blogger: I'm calling to see if you have a story that might be interesting. Spokesperson: I don't think so, do you have a specific question? Blogger: Not really. Spokesperson: Lame. Blogger: Fuck you.

haggie

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:21:03 -0800

You have to take your shoes and belt off first...

travin

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:59:26 -0800

Let's be fair on the flip side - someone with reporter-slash-blogger in their job description should damned well be able and willing to make the first question worthy of his time and response. Ya gotta know that being in this guy's position everyone is gunning for him and he's hugely busy. You fling a half-thought out question, essentially delegating your responsibilities and making him think for you, that's so entirely vague it just becomes a trap of gotchas. Multiply that by how many thousands of bloggers/reporters contact him on a monthly basis and, well, it's a pretty bleak picture. And to be fair, he did give you a second-take opportunity to ask a more solid question. At the very least, he did take your phone call. He knows most of the people that contact him are going to talk shit about him no matter what he says so he just made sure the conversation was a short one. And you didn't fail him.

Ciaran

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:10:15 -0800

I thought those jobs at the airport were six-figure gifts the mayor could use as rewards or to keep people quiet?

withak

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:00:29 -0800

Maybe he is nice to real reporters?

Brock Keeling

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:37:37 -0800

^ exactly.

what

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:36:37 -0800

Let's be fair-- someone with "spokesperson" in their job description should damned well be able and willing to take that first question and run with it.

gkanapathy

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:34:09 -0800

In my world, he wouldn't have a job either, but that's only because in my world, airports wouldn't have "media relations" at all, because they wouldn't waste money on crap other than, let's see, taking care of planes and travelers. In my world, someone else in society would have the job of assembling information and synthesizing into a form useful to the public. But hey, in this world, we have the airport administrations we have, and we have the media we have.

Akit

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:30:15 -0800

I miss the other guy whose been representing the airport for years.

tiffanymSF

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:45:30 -0800

It's true. I was totally passive aggressive on the phone. I guess I hold a grudge. I actually did mean my initial question about the state of the airline industry to spark a larger discussion about the tourism in 2009 in San Francisco, but alas it didn't. And perhaps I should've just kept hammering away (in my experience, that's always just culled more anger, BUT how can I know if I didn't try!) Thanks for everyone's feedback. Journalists are such a whiny bunch. We just need a swift kick every now and then put us back in our places!

SquirrelMaster

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:02:05 -0800

So basically you didn't have any real questions for this guy, you just wanted sound bytes to flesh out an article that was too short? Boo hoo.

Ciaran

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:21:02 -0800

And coordinate with your other author who just posted the 'SFO PR rocks' story above ;)

TheCharlie

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:04:25 -0800

I think the "I guess we'll just find someone else who can" is a little passive aggressive if you want to get information out of someone. I get that the guy was a dick, but the interviewer could push a little harder to get answers to the questions.

Ciaran

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:01:56 -0800

I'd be annoyed too if someone asked me questions like that. What exactly did you want from him, except some vague soundbitey thing about airplanes and the economy? And if you hate him that much you can always fly out of Oakland ;)

periqueblend

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:49:47 -0800

somebody was rude to a member of the fourth estate! quick blog about it!