AGATE

I should clarify that I still have the local agate. But the AP stuff is just too difficult to work with anymore. I might as well do the AL and NL myself rather than wait for the AP to skip the central time zone update again.

But local high school and junior college standings and box scores are very important to the tiny daily like mine. The big-city metro isn't likely to run the juco football stuff and doesn't compile juco basketball stuff at all, so it's one of the few advantages I can exploit.

 

Doing daily agate always seemed to be a pain in the ass, particularly when I was doing the rest of the section. For some strange reason, though, I enjoyed the challenge of tabbing, bolding, etc, cleaning it up.

My last shop has pretty much eliminated agate, or does a poor job of presenting it. You don't know from one day to the next whether the MLB standings will be there or not. To me, that is an absolute must.

Agree with an earlier post...it's information readers look for, IMHO.

 

I grew up in the 70s reading agate. Before I was old enough to drive, I would look at the Dunkels, RPI, standings, schedules, pitching probables, etc. ... every morning before going to school.

Then evetually, I landed in the biz and worked agate long enough that I'd like to think I was one of the best (thanks to a number of great people I met along the way).

It's odd but true, when still working agate I'd often use the Internet to check, confirm and come up with stats.

So maybe this is just another example of how papers are slowly dying and getting replaced by the Internet/IPhone world.

Remember those expanded MLB Standings in Chicago Tribune Sunday editions? Now, those kicked ass

 

I work at about a 6500 circulation. We only run local agate, such as a schedule a week out, announcements, prep standings, football and basketball stats and prep football, basketball, wrestling, baseball and softball in-depth to line score boxes depending on the interest of the sport. I really don't have time to mess with national agate. Most people that buy us also buy the big metro so we try to stress heavy local. I'd love to run the basic national agate but it's either have expanded local results that people really want in my area. Secondary sports like volleyball and wrestling actually have a decent amount of interest in my area. Baseball and softball aren't too bad, either.

 

Agate is more important than ever to our readership. The reason: Fantasy sports. The Innertubes is all well and good, but a good agate page in a newspaper is still the best one-stop source for looking up fantasy stats. (Hi spnited!)

 

Look, I agree with how AP Exchange sucks on so many levels, especially for tracking down things like college football scorelists and regular baseball box scores (not expanded or wide ones).

But I disagree with the argument "running agate's a pain the ass, let's get rid of it." I mean, people read it and all the different sports results are in one place, ready to read with your morning coffee.

Obits are huge pain in the ass to get from funeral homes, and even worse to lay out on the page, but I would never print a paper without those.

Just sayin: keep running the sports agate ... although we'd all love to see an alternative to AP Exchange.

 

I wouldn't have a problem with re-formatting the AP stuff myself to suit my needs and I was earlier in the year before I got stuck also being the interim managing editor. The problem isn't what I want to give the readers or what I think/thought they want(ed); it's that I don't have enough time to screw with it between doing double duty and having an 11 p.m. (Central) deadline.

 

We don't have the AP issue...but I make up all our local agate (high school/college standings) in Excel files...it takes some time, but I've heard feedback that readers appreciate seeing the standings and such that the state's big paper ignores (except football, of course, and usually they have it wrong anyway).

So I think agate has it's place, just a matter of how much time to put into it...I value that page, but I've made cutbacks over the years for deadline's sake.