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Relaxing summers?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Illino, Jun 7, 2016.

  1. MNgremlin

    MNgremlin Active Member

    We still cover the in-town Legion and VFW baseball teams. Not our other area towns though. If they call/email stats, we'll throw a brief together but that's it.

    Amateur baseball is pretty big in Minnesota. We actually had two towns in our area start up new teams this year. Easy place to get features from. Or even just previewing a team one weekend and then going to cover a game that day too.

    Weeknight games usually start at 7:30 so it can be tough to get a decent game story in the paper, but lately we've been just running a photo package and then typing a brief if they call before deadline.
     
  2. reformedhack

    reformedhack Well-Known Member

    Since the thread has migrated into how to fill a section during the summer — and there's nothing wrong with that — I'll ignore my previous comment about not offering story suggestions. :)

    I'm a big believer in the idea that a good section does three things for its readers: It informs, it entertains and it's useful in practical, hands-on ways. On a great day, you'll get all three. Sometimes, you can get only two. While your first goal is to cover the news — and uncover the news — the well occasionally will run dry. If you don't have much daily local news at the moment, and you don't have an enterprising piece ready to pop, you might want to concoct a weekly series or two to fill those long summer months — especially some easy ones that you can bang out from the comfort of your desk, if necessary.

    As an editor and as a reader, I appreciate useful content. To that end, for example, my small team and I once created a weekly summer series about sports readers can involve themselves in. Individual stories about canoeing down the local river, shooting at a local paintball range, taking up bocce, what you actually get out of a tennis lesson, etc. It included lots of how-to stuff and where-to stuff. I think we called it "Great Escapes" or something equally clever. Individually, they weren't exactly groundbreaking, but packaging them together as part of an ongoing series gave them collective heft. Readers liked it. It did a really nice job of filling some arid Wednesday sections.

    If your tendency is to go for something entertaining, that's fine, too. Big-event anniversaries, where-are-they-now features and the like can serve a purpose. Go through your paper's archives and see what was happening in the community 20, 25, 30 years ago. Or, do some projection into the future — if the upcoming prep football season looks like it will be the year of the quarterback among your schools, for example, go ahead and write that story now for your Sunday centerpiece. You don't have to save it for your preview section (which, yes, you should be working on at this point already).

    As mentioned earlier, this is also a good time to be working on investigations or "think" pieces — which, of course, is harder to do. The youth baseball park is a good example of news for the public good. And don't be afraid to look at arcane stuff, like school athletic contracts. Did Podunk High get a sweetheart deal from NogginCo. for the 70 football helmets it bought three years ago, when the company was cited two years ago for manufacturing equipment that didn't meet federal safety guidelines? Something like that can at least shake you out of your summer doldrums. Nothing like a good FOIA request to get the blood pumping.

    Going beyond wild art, which we also mentioned earlier, see if you can get your staff photographer free to do a couple of honest-to-God photo essays over the summer. I'm not talking about collage pages for big events like youth baseball tournaments (which are low-hanging fruit, but perfectly reasonable at times). No, if you can plan it far enough in advance, do something specific and unexpected — like 24 hours in the life of a local basketball court (if it's notoriously busy), or an afternoon of blood, sweat and tears following one player during preseason prep football drills. Present it as a full page or a double-truck — with some words for context, full cutlines and lots of cool photography. If you have the right shooter, he/she will relish the opportunity to show off his/her artistic side.

    Last thought that pops into my head: Look for content from unexpected places. While I would never run stuff directly from a college SID or PRNewswire, there's a burgeoning number of nonprofit, independent news sites that allow you to use their (surprisingly good) stories at no cost, because they're trying to get their name out there. One that springs to mind — although it doesn't apply to sports — is Kaiser Health News. They're owned by the Kaiser Family Foundation (as in Kaiser Pharmaceuticals), but they're independent and they say as much. Down here in Florida, the state's biggest newspaper — the one with a well-documented fetish for ethics and transparency and truth and justice and the American way — uses their stories all the time. There might be some sports-related services like that. Sometime between Google searches for the latest work from Lisa Ann — and there's nothing wrong with that — it might be worth an online check to see what's out there and what might be useful to you.

    Oh, one additional last thought: This year marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. If you've got one in your area or nearby, and you have a writer who can find something interesting to write about the outdoors, there might be something worth pursuing. (If you have several within an easy drive of your town, you might be able to throw together a mini-series.)

    Anyway, just a few thoughts ... offering some summer inspiration. Just send my usual consulting fee to the regular address.
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2016
    Illino likes this.
  3. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Given the rise in endurance sports - running, cycling, etc. - an easy summer filler is to feature one outstanding local adult athlete. Go look at the entrants' list for the Boston Marathon, Pike's Peak Marathon, Leadville 100, Dirty Kanza 200, Alcatraz swim and other big events for locals. Write about how they balance training with work and family. They also usually have good stories to tell.
     
  4. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I am partial to "How do they do that?" stories. They work for news but can also work for sports. Benefits are that you can make a big splash with photos, charts, tables without writing 2,000 words.

    Examples might be how a triathlon trains for an Ironman. You could do a short story on the local triathlete then document the training regiment, miles run/biked per day and per week. Pool time per day/week. How they fit that into a work/family schedule. What they eat/drink. Etc.

    Ideally in a story you'd have not just the numbers but the juggling act between work/training and family; how they push on when they don't feel great; how they afford it or find sponsors, etc.

    Could also work for throwing a curveball, speedy pits stops at the local track, train a horse, catch a really big fish, whatever.
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2016
    reformedhack likes this.
  5. KJIM

    KJIM Well-Known Member

    [QUOTE="albert77, post: 4061485, member: 8919/]
    We did have a serious youth baseball story fall into our lap about 10 years ago that turned out to be probably the best thing I ever did in my career. I got a call from a youth baseball mom one afternoon and she was complaining that the local Dixie Youth facility was a death trap, that a 7 YO kid had been hit by a car chasing a foul ball a few days earlier, and while he wasn't seriously injured, the next kid might not be so lucky.[/QUOTE]

    Excellent example of why no one should automatically blow off calls from parents. The way people here complain about them -- especially moms -- you'd think the lot of them were single-minded simpletons who don't deserve the time of day.

    Based on what I've seen here, I can visualize thee posts criticizing the mom inital call:
    "Suck it up, mom. Your kid missed a foul ball. No scholarship for him."
    "Pay attention, junior. There's a warning track, you know."
    "Yeah, maybe the kext kid will be smarter than yours."
    "But was she a 6?"

    Just because a caller spawns offspring and/or lacks a penis doesn't mean the person doesn't have a brain. Yeah, there are some overzealous ones, but hear them out. For better or worse, that's your readership, and if you listen, you can get good information.

    (And yeah, I know many sj.comers would deny this would happen and potential reactions, but based on the complaints I've been seeing for 10 years now, it does.)
     
  6. MNgremlin

    MNgremlin Active Member

    Yeah, because we're all dumb enough to talk about the kids/parents the same way on the phone with the parents as we do here...
     
  7. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    [QU, OTE="KJIM, post: 4061778, member: 4094"][QUOTE="albert77, post: 4061485, member: 8919/]
    We did have a serious youth baseball story fall into our lap about 10 years ago that turned out to be probably the best thing I ever did in my career. I got a call from a youth baseball mom one afternoon and she was complaining that the local Dixie Youth facility was a death trap, that a 7 YO kid had been hit by a car chasing a foul ball a few days earlier, and while he wasn't seriously injured, the next kid might not be so lucky.[/QUOTE]

    Excellent example of why no one should automatically blow off calls from parents. The way people here complain about them -- especially moms -- you'd think the lot of them were single-minded simpletons who don't deserve the time of day.

    Based on what I've seen here, I can visualize thee posts criticizing the mom inital call:
    "Suck it up, mom. Your kid missed a foul ball. No scholarship for him."
    "Pay attention, junior. There's a warning track, you know."
    "Yeah, maybe the kext kid will be smarter than yours."
    "But was she a 6?"

    Just because a caller spawns offspring and/or lacks a penis doesn't mean the person doesn't have a brain. Yeah, there are some overzealous ones, but hear them out. For better or worse, that's your readership, and if you listen, you can get good information.

    (And yeah, I know many sj.comers would deny this would happen and potential reactions, but based on the complaints I've been seeing for 10 years now, it does.)[/QUOTE]

    All depends on how the caller handles themselves and the issue, of course. The story about the unsafe ballfield was a good one. But how many times is it a parental unit complaining about PT, or something else trivial, or that old standby, "you never cover us?"

    Guess I'm thinking of a few years ago when we had two Cal Ripken teams headed to regionals. One family had kids on both teams, so it became a split-loyalties type of story. Gave mama a card and she did send some stories and photos back.

    But a few months later I start getting emails about how I should come to their youth football game, because their team is so good, evenough though some other team got all the super talented players. Ignored them for the most part until the week they were playing the super team, and she mentioned the sheriff would be there. Huh? So I tell the city editor this might be something (thank goodness he was a sports fan) then asked the cop reporter for the sheriff's number. The sheriff was cool. Told me some deputies were involved in the league, but he wasn't and had other plans for game day. So was able to tell the city editor it was another parental pissing contest and we let it go. Never returned the email, but the sheriff gained my vote.
     
  8. KJIM

    KJIM Well-Known Member

    Thing is, even if the caller presented herself badly, it still was an issue and made a great story.

    The mom could have been hysterical, rude, overprotective: "Junior could have been killed! Think of the children!" - and been ignored by many. That wouldn't have changed the underlying issue. It was still a potential story, no matter how it was presented. In this case, Albert didn't say how the caller presented the information.

    And yeah, based on the real responses people have had to callers that have been documented on this site the 10 years I've been here, I do think some (not most) members are that dumb.
     
  9. MNgremlin

    MNgremlin Active Member

    Unless you were there in person, not sure you can say for certain that those were the real responses.

    We are storytellers. Telling a story of how we told a JV mom off is a better story than being a perfect example of customer service.
     
  10. KJIM

    KJIM Well-Known Member

    I understand. Heck, that's what the whole stupid caller thead is for, but that's not what I'm talking about.

    Yeah, we're storytellers. But it's been demonstrated on multiple threads that even when the facts are out there, the fact the caller is a parent (or old person), and especially a woman, then the person is more likely to be disregarded.

    Either way, "Little Junior could have gotten hurt!," "This is a serious problem, someone should look at it" can both represent the same situation, and those are just two ways to put it out there. I've no idea how the woman came acrosss to Albert (or if Albert was the first person she contacted), but he was astute enough to realize there was more to it than Junior's circumstance. Whether the caller had to push it with him, paint a picture or what, I don't know, but it happened, he did the research and did what good journalists do.

    If you really think that there's a group of sports writers on this site would not have head a woman's voice and the word "parent" and mentally checked out of the call, you're kidding yourself.
     
  11. JBHawkEye

    JBHawkEye Well-Known Member

    Iowa plays its high school baseball and softball in the summer (state tournaments are at the end of July), so we don't have any problem with local copy. Now it's gotten to the the point where the end of the spring season overlaps the beginning of the summer season by more than two weeks. So, of course, we had the baseball and softball parents complaining about why we weren't covering games (almost all being nonconference games) while we were still covering soccer postseason tournaments.
     
  12. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    Why was the sheriff being at the game important? There was going to be violence?
     
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