Dealing with early deadlines and late games...

Run just a photo and cutline with the press-time score? Take it out entirely?

What's the solution? Personally, I hate the above options, but what else is there to do when you're a one-issue daily paper? I'm talking mainly about major games, like the potentially World Series-clinching Game 5 still going on. West Coast games also apply here, in many cases.

 

I subscribed to the press-time score once. I most definitely don't anymore. A majority of your readers -- and almost all of them who actually care about the event -- already know the final score.

A more sensible approach is to put in a late-game box without a score and refer readers to where they can find the final game story on your website.

 

I'm leaning this way, as well....but I'm not the decision-maker at my shop.

However, does leaving it out give the impression that the newsroom was unaware about the game or felt it wasn't important enough for the section?

 

Nope. I think you've got to give your readers more credit than that.

 

This was always our approach for west coast games when our press deadline was moved ridiculously early. It isn't ideal, but it is the best you can do.

 

Put in an early photo with a line directing people to your website for the story. I wouldn't even waste time with a late-game box. If it's a huge game, maybe have a few graphs summarizing what happened early. But I don't even think you bother with that. If they know the final score, they probably know as much as you're going to give them anyhow. Just run something that acknowledges it and you have it on line and move on.

 

Not even worth summarizing much of the early stuff. Look at last night's game: Everything changed from the ninth inning on. So the print edition would look even more unprepared to summarize by saying "The Mets clung to an early lead as they tried to stay alive in the Series."

 

City gamers and area scores on Saturday, rest of area recaps, standings and boxes on Sunday.

 

I'd only buy that if you're woefully short on manpower or time. Woefully short.

 

I had this issue with my first gig out of college and dealt with it for three years. It was a daily and our deadline was 9:30, so no gamers ever got in the paper unless it was a Saturday afternoon game or early game from a high school basketball tournament or something. What we did was put a photo from the game in and a score and refer it to online. The gamer would run online that night and in the paper the day after, so like a Tuesday game would go in Thursday's paper. Even though it's a day late, the print readers still want to see it. But for football, I worked in a place small enough where there was really just one main high school in the coverage area and could do a follow up Saturday morning after the coaches and players watched the film from Friday's game. I still did a gamer on Friday night, which ran online Friday, and the follow up on Saturday. As far as the national sports, World Series, NBA Finals, College football and basketball national title games never got in and we were in the Mountain Time Zone. Usually we just ran a photo from those and referred to the website since we had a AP sports feed on our website. It's rough and not a ideal situation. For that paper where I used to work, if the main high school's boys basketball team won a state title, it wouldn't make the next day's paper since the biggest class plays their boys state title game at 8 or 9 p.m. on a Saturday. I know some places who cover Division I college sports that have really early deadlines and can't get that stuff in the next day's paper. And you're always going to get complaints about it. My old shop went to a 9:30 deadline in like 2007 or 2008, I think, and the sports guy who's there now says he still gets calls about it. Sadly, though, since I left, the people that have replaced me don't put the gamer articles online the night of the game and wait till the next day, which defeats of the purpose of a website.

 

Your "shops" just aren't using the Web site effectively.

You should test your enterprising readers by turning the gamer into a quest. Make them work to find it, like a scavenger hunt. You can put ads and questionnaires on each page as they click their way through to the gamer.

 

We've used photo refers to the web for local events, since nearly every high school basketball game last winter started too late for our one-edition paper. We will post one complete story online and make sure it's easily accessible to readers, and send that link out via all our social media feeds.

I think the powers that be used early features in print -- with web refers -- for the World Series and other pro stuff, but no partial scores.