AGATE

Does anyone know of another reliable source of agate other than the Associated Press?

 

No. And I've been hating AP agate this year. It's to the point where I quit using it because screwing with it carried me too close to the brink of missing deadline....or caused me to miss it. Odd thing, I've only had one reader complain. Granted, we're a 2,000 circ paper, but I still figured I'd hear it from all around. Nope, virtually nothing. Either people don't read this paper for that kind of thing or they're getting that info from somewhere else and they're quite content with that.

 

Yeah, we've been talking about dropping AP and I know my boss had looked into alternate providers.

I guess Stats.com is about it now that they bought out SportsTicker ... right?

 

Agate should go away anyway for good. It's a pain in the ass to do and half the old people can't read it cause the print is too small. I used to hate doing it. Talk about carpal tunnel syndrome. Yikes.

 

Yeah. Standings and such. No need for those irritants Sports sections.

 

Yes, not having stats might make some people mad but as far as the standings, that could just be added with another graph to every game story. If you put half the stuff on the agate page somewhere else, it might free up a whole page to actually create some flexibility for the paginator and the readers might get more of a variety that they like. Who gives a shit about the odds? Get that shit online. Most people who bet are broke now b/c of the economy and don't have a buck for a newspaper anyway. Fishing report???? The water is either rough or it is fucking cold or hot. End of that story. Agate page has some good stuff but a lot of useless stuff too.

 

Useless to you. Call me crazy, but I'm opposed to giving the reader less.
We've done that for the better part of this decade. Tell me how that's going?

 

I mean really. I go fishing all the time and have great success. It's supposed to be for relaxation, not to sit there and analyze a paper before you leave. Here's the only report you need. Get a fishing license, a rod and reel, some rigs and bait of choice and drop the damn thing in the water and drink beer til the fish bite.

 

People like knowing where they're biting and what they're biting on.

I promise, if I omitted the weekly fishing report, I'd spend the next day doing nothing but answering my phone.

 

I'm 50-50 on this one. We quit running the betting odds a few months ago, and no one seemed to notice, and we haven't run any kind of fishing report in years, and, again no one has complained, despite this being rabid fishing country (freshwater and deep-sea).

On the other hand, we run most of our prep call-ins (summaries and linescores) in agate, and that would elicit a howl or two if we did away with it. Agate is the best way to get the most names and games in the least amount of space.

We also get the odd birds who complain if we happen to skip the hockey standings or don't run the tennis results, and woe be unto the desker who forgets to run the NASCAR results.

So, yes, the agate page does have its place, and we have a lot of readers who like having it. We run all our agate in one place, on B2 every day, so it's easy to find.

 

I had an old sports editor who used to tell me the agate page is the most important page in a small newspaper. don't know if he was trying to keep me from pulling my eyes out since i did it five nights a week or if he actually believed it. either way, im in the category of pro-agate page, especially local line scores. while there isn't anything national on the page that can't be found a million other places, i do like the idea of readers not having an excuse to go elsewhere for their sporting information.

 

We did some serious research into getting agate from somewhere other than AP, and it's tough to find anyone even close to providing what they do. The Sports Network is trying to offer a service to compete with AP, but they're still in the early stages of expanding their service. The AP has a stake in Stats Inc., and I never got them to answer my inquiries about services separate from the AP. I was incredibly happy when we decided to renew our AP contract.