Dealing with early deadlines and late games...

Once upon a time, we had an 11:15 first edition deadline.
Now it's a single deadline at 10:45. Funny how much difference that 30 minutes - and no second-edition replate, of course - can make in what doesn't get in.
For the World Series, we found an appropriate AP story each day with a "check the website" note. About all you can do.
I knew Sunday night was a lost cause from the beginning. We gave the Royals follo centerpiece treatment for Tuesday.

 

It's disturbing that newspaper execs have ditched going late a few times a year for sports. World Series, Super Bowl, NCAA basketball championship. Readers will complain either way, so you might as well get the game in.

"Yes, sir, delivery is a bit late this week. It's the World Series. Get it?"

 

A partial score serves nobody. If anything, it only points out the weaknesses of the print deadline. While a photo and a web refer ("For complete coverage ...") don't provide the news, they at least give you a professional way out. Leverage your website.

Partials are a holdover from a bygone era, when there were few other avenues to get the information. Print has to be responsive to modern reality here.

 

Modern reality? How many newspapers that are being produced and printed at other plants have final deadline for completed pages before 11 p.m.? Modern reality is publishers don't care about the product -- they will not hold the paper for late events -- so what you do is downplay the late event even if it's the World Series and put in an insert in a wire story that says full coverage on internet.

 

I would never run a non-final score. Too much can go wrong.

 

More than that, they think readers don't care for us to give it to them. More times than I can count, I've heard the "They can get that anywhere" line in regards to national events. If you're the Kansas City star or even a small Missouri or Kansas paper waiting on the end of Game 5, that's one thing. If you're a small paper in Alabama waiting on it, it's harder to justify.

 

You and I are actually saying the same thing, sir.

 

All of this. NO on partial scores. It's irrelevant by the time the reader sees it. All you can do is run a plugger feature story and tease to the website. I have gotten so used to it that I don't even blink when I have to do that. If we have even a pro team playing a game in another time zone that we won't get for the first of our two editions (11/11:30 and 11:30/12 depending on the night of the week) the staff writer produces a feature and then writes the game story to file at the buzzer. I live in a major metro area, and the other local paper has more than two deadlines. If I buy the paper off the rack, I almost never get coverage of anything that started past 7:30. Even the pros and major colleges. And I live less than 5 miles from where the paper prints. We push our deadlines back for major events, but usually it's just a reality that you have to adapt to.

 

Just one of the many frustrations of the job. I feel like we should start a thread...I'm sure the list would be a long one.

 

Every ounce of my being wants to say, "This is 2015 and everyone is either watching or will get the score on their phone before they ever see the paper."

But every ounce of my experience tells me otherwise. There's a crowd that, for whatever reason, wants that in print. It's just sort of like they just need something to be acknowledged in some weird way. Last place I worked, we had deadlines moved up significantly and could no longer get in Braves games if they didn't start before 7. The first few weeks I was just getting killed with calls, thinking the "late" in the agate was enough. I started running a one-column standalone with a cutline saying the score at press time and overnight the calls stopped. Like dropped to zero in a day.

Even where I'm at now, we have an early edition (8 p.m. deadline), and I was killed the first time we just left a standalone and score out for a game that hadn't even started yet. I got killed over it. Yet we stick in a standalone, say the game was only about to tip off at press time and I don't hear a word.