AP changing roundups

It's called blazing a trail...

 

NBA's Portland team doesn't capitalize its nickname anymore? Weird.

 

My thoughts exactly. This actually makes some sense and, at the very least, doesn't seem like something to be complaining about. Obviously the potential problems with the slug could be trouble, but otherwise, if this is the biggest complaint you can muster, well good for you.

 

I just don't understand the point to it. Why don't you keep calling it NL Roundup? What's the point?

 

or is that portland's nba team?

 

This is mainly a coding issue... no big deal. I've always run roundups that way anyway.

If I want to lead with a different game than AP leads with, I just take the 6-8 inch short on that game and copy and paste it at the top of the file and move the others down. I routinely move games around in order within the roundup because of certain teams or players.

Being on the west coast, we would get most of the games in on most nights. But, rather than wait for a final roundup, I'd take an earlier one with all BUT the west coast games in, put it on the page, save a space and then add the west coast games later. The difference was it meant less work to be done after 10 p.m. when I was busy finishing off preps and proofing pages. The more I could get done at an earlier hour, the easier my night would be.

 

Either way, Portland Trail Blazers would be capitalized. So would NBA.

 

I wouldn't bank on this whole thing lasting too long. Maybe the new format of the roundup, but I can see a lot of complaints rolling in about the slug problem (although wouldn't it make a lot of sense to put RDP before the teams in the top game, so you wouldn't have to worry about it getting cut off in a slug search?).

I'm over on the business desk at my shop now and had a similar slugging issue. AP moves a weekly feature slugged "Business of Life". For some reason, they decided to slug the weekly BoL feature like any other feature, although it would still technically be a "Business of Life" feature. I have no idea why they made the change, but it must not have gone over too well because they were back to doing it the old way in less than a month.

 

That's how I run the roundups anyway. I'm in favor.

 

Ask AP to change the slug to:

BC-BKN--Rdp-Celtics-Lakers

That problem solved.

 

Sounds like this applies to just the PM cycle anyway. Roundup is something different than capsules.

 

As someone who works at a PM paper, I'll say it's not a huge deal. But it is taking something away. Since most games are almost a day old by the time people see our paper, we'd gotten into the habit of just using that 10-12 inch topper. There's also times when the roundup included bits and pieces of two or three games with common themes (say, a baseball roundup that tied a couple of playoff races together). That was a nice thing for us to throw in there, without having to run 30 inches of capsules.
We can still put it together this way, obviously, but it's going to take a bit more work.