Best preps coverage?

Check out the Billings Gazette and the Great Falls Tribune out here in Montana. They don't have huge staffs but have to cover a gigantic territory. Because of the sheer size of their coverage areas most of the in depth gamers are from the teams in their local counties, unless its tournament time, but they still make room quite a few features each season on teams and individuals from outlying counties. In general they do a great job of covering preps in the entire state in addition to college coverage.

 

There are a few outliers - The St. Pete Times, as mentioned above - but I think 40,000-60,000 circ. papers seem built to have the best preps coverage. They're at the right size to put their resources to it and at that size they're unlikely to have so many schools it either spreads them too thin or makes it nearly impossible for the crew to be experts on their sports or regions, depending on how they break it up.

 

Where papers like the Florida and Texas papers are better is that they have year-round newsholes dedicated to preps. It gets scaled back in the summer, but there is year-round coverage that you never see at certain places. The job they do is really amazing.

At my first stop, on a sports staff of 47 full-timers, we had one preps guy. He was off the entire summer. You wouldn't see that in St. Pete or Dallas.

 

Check out the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago.

The paper has about 10 fulltimers and several parttime writing about prep sports. The paper zones it's coverage about four ways.