A great Sunday takeout idea w/great layout butchered by lack of space

Boy, this bugged me today.

The Newsday sports insert today featured, in the centerfold, this story and sidebar on underground ultimate fighting:

http://www.newsday.com/sports/printedition/ny-spcombatside115125865mar11,0,6634253.story?coll=ny-sports-print

http://www.newsday.com/sports/printedition/ny-spcombat115125866mar11,0,5392467.story?coll=ny-sports-print

Accompanying the story were several excellent photos...guys fighting, one guy looking dazed after taking a loss and a few photos of fighters preparing for their bouts. Obviously, lots is lost in translation here, but you'll have to trust me, this looked great. The photos whetted your appetite for the story. you see the picture of the guy looking dazed and you want to know how badly he got beat and why he does this. You see the pictures of the guys preparing and wonder the same thing...why do you do this?

Yet the story is just two pages. The main story is just over 1,000 words (yeah I cut and pasted it to find out). And it's filled with great anedotes and great characters who deserve to have their stories fleshed out. But space issues rendered what could have been an award-winning piece merely very good...thru no fault of the writer.

This of course is indictative of the entire Newsday "inside sports" section, which could be great if corporate tried. There are two very good Mark Herrmann columns and two very good John Jeansonne features. But there are only two news and notes columns this week: Baseball and a very brief basketball. The media column is on line only. The NHL insider is entirely about the Chris Simon incident. Yet a page worth of space is given to brief news-and-notes items (under the headings Sports BLOG!!!! and Inside Sports). None of this stuff is earth-shattering and most of it is stuff that could easily be shifted online in order to better utilize the space for the great takeout piece that was instead crammed into a feature.

I've rambled. It's just frustrating to see a once-vibrant paper nickled and dimed into mediocrity.

 

i've heard rumors that UFC could begin to grace the sports pages daily, a la boxing.
I'm a little mixed on the idea, but I can why papers and TV stations would want to cover the SPORT <-? If UFC came to my town, I'd jump at the chance to check it out, and I'm sure our readers would love to see the pictures in the paper.
It's just one of those things where it's not a traditional sport and I'm faced with the prospect of shrinking my section even more, especially with NCAA hoops, NBA and MLB already taking up a big chunk the paper.

 

Thanks for reminding me of something I somehow forgot to include in my ramble.

I don't like UFC and all that crap at all. But to me, it's GREAT fodder for a takeout. A Sunday special on the UFC/underground fighting is a great idea. But like so many other things, it's a good idea done half-heartedly (and that is NOT a criticism of the writer, Barbara Barker).

 

My paper, about 4 months ago, did a big feature on an MMA guy and it ran with a short insert box asking readers if the paper should cover this sport. There were more than 100 e-mails with positive responses and only a handful saying no.
Now, at times, we incorporate MMA news into the weekly boxing column.

 

What's the header, since it's a mix of boxing and UFC/MMA?

BLEEDING
BROKEN AND BATTERED

 

can't really use KICKING THE CRAP OUT OF SOMEBODY ... but that would be accurate.

 

During the time Ultimate Fighter 4 was on-the-air, Newsday had East Meadow native Matt Serra blog.

 

They call it "Ring notes"

 

I've said it here before, but I grew up on Newsday sports, and had no idea how good I had it.

MLB- Verducci, Noble
NFL - King, Glauber
College sports - Maisel
NBA - Hubbard
Other - Gergen, Jacobsen

This is from memory, so I'm sure I messed up a little, but this is the gist.

 

You're memory's failing you a bit. Don't forget:

Columnist - Romano