DMN's SportsDay ... share and share alike

Look, I undertsand that the biz sucks, budgets are slashed, etc. However, I was slightly stunned when I looked at DMN's SportsDay2 (their Sunday 2nd section that features college football).

Texas gamer from ... Austin American-Statesman.
Texas notes from ... AA-S.
A&M gamer from ... San Antonio Express-News.
Baylor notes from ... Waco Tribune-Herald.
OU gamer from ... The Oklahoman.

Not to mention, two stories on Oregon State-TCU from "special contributors" (FW Star-Telegram). At least Cowlishaw columnized from Jerry World.

Yes, I'm aware of the sharing agreement between DMN and FWS-T, but good gawd ... opening week of college football season and SportsDay staffs it like they're a 20,000 circulation rag.

Somebody tell me why I'm subscribing to a paper with a sports section that can't/won't generate original content; I can find all the gamers they printed on line.

 

The Morning News not covering Texas would be a stunner -- if that kind of thing wasn't happening every day right now.

But you're right.

 

I'd rather have stories from other papers than my local metro's trick of lightly, if at all, editing the SID release and slapping "Press Services" byline on it, then calling it a day on game coverage they can't get staff writers to.

Spring for the $75 and hire a fucking stringer.

 

DMN did not cover Texas-Rice because our lead college writer, Chuck Carlton, was in the hospital after having chest pains the night before. We were told last night that Chuck had apparently suffered a mild heart attack. That is second-hand information -- I haven't talked to Chuck, who is a tremendous guy and an extremely hard worker -- so I don't know the specific terminology of what happened. I do know he was still in the hospital while UT was playing so we had to improvise.

 

If the OU story comes from The Oklahoman --- is that really so bad? As a reader, I can still pick up the sports section and get my full dose of college football while having coffee and a cheese omelet. Some people might even think that having the Oklahoman cover the game authority to the report. (Yes, I know the story will have an OU slant, but still ...)

 

Honestly, I've always maintained that the majority of readers coud care less whose name was on the byline, as long as the information was accurate and the stories were there. Content sharing is another way to do this. My chain does it all the time. Why send one of our people 120 miles to cover a game when we can get the same info from a sister paper in the university's home town? It simply enables us to stretch our resources further at a time when resources are limited.

Granted, we're not a giant metro like the Dallas Morning News, but the principle is still the same.

 

We consider OU one of our "home" teams, so a Sooners angle is fine. Plus, the Sooners were playing Utah State. Whose angle should the story have?

 

Agreed.

 

The idea that "I can get all those gamers online" is rather irrelevant. You can get them all online regardless of who wrote them.

 

I have no problem swapping spit with out-of-town papers when one of our teams is in their area and one of theirs is here, especially during playoff season. Usually takes just a few keystrokes to change the angle in most cases.

 

Holy shit, I hope Chuck is going to be ok.

 

This cross-pollination is going on at Web sites, too.

Jobs killer.

Eventually, we'll have the same 59 sportswriters nationally providing content to everyone.