RIP, AP baseball gamer

I am surprised the gamer is still kicking at all in 2014, especially in print.

 

They did it with NFL and Top 25 previews ("Five things to know about Podunk Tech vs. Shelbyville A&M"), and even in spring training. Like everyone else, with a shrinking news hole, a greater push for local news, and earlier deadlines with us going to an RDC, outside of a special even like a no-hitter, opening day or in September, trying to remember the last time I ran a gamer during the regular season. Now, they start effing with the capsules ...

 

I don't quite know about that, but I don't have any problem with it in today's climate.

 

They already have...they combined it into one capsule, no more AL or NL separate caps. I find this annoying.

 

My biggest problem with AP right now - and maybe it's just perception - but it appears they sit on stories that are already completed. They send out that 40-word NewsNow that nobody uses. Some of them are for features and already read like the start of a feature, giving you the impression the finished product is already there. However, my impression is that far too often AP sits on it to keep a story flow going in a set amount of time (i.e. get the NewsNow on the wire within 10 minutes of a game ending, then the no-quote lead on the wire within 25-30 minutes). When I was a stringer for AP, we had to have baseball game stories in the bureau after the seventh inning, then we just updated as we went along. That would presumably get them on the wire almost immediately upon the completion of a game. However, now that I'm saddled with far more desk work than I care to perform, I am stunned at how long it takes to get even the 100-or-so-word AP baseball story. If we're on deadline and a Tigers game ends 15 within 10 minutes of deadline, we just skip it - there's no chance we'll have the 100-word story in time.

I didn't like the format AP used in spring training, primarily because there were notes on both teams. In Michigan, readers won't care about the changes in the Cardinals' batting lineup. You might as well pitch half the notes automatically.

 

Good last point there. Didn't think of that. It is going to have some useless crap in it.

 

Update on this.

From what I'm seeing today, they are still running APNewsNow, first ledes and optionals -- home and away optionals.

Those bullet points are just being added to the end of those stories.

We like. And I get the feeling this wasn't the original plan, but somebody made it clear that the members weren't too crazy about that first idea.

 

I'm happy if this means someone will again scatter nine hits.

 

Editors are happy if that means you can plan for a 12" story on the local team on deadline rather than a 6" ASF.

That's not an unreasonable stance. Some may not want to run that. Some will.

It's about having options -- something AP has taken away little by little over the past five years.

 

This is sort of a naive comment: "In the end, I don't think it will really matter how papers receive it. They can run this new format or hire a beat writer to follow the team. Pretty obvious which one will happen."

Isn't AP run by its member newspapers? Doesn't AP worry about losing customers to, say, Reuters?

 

Our whole chain dropped AP en masse and picked up MCT and WaPo/Bloomberg News.