Finding the right balance

If you find the right balance, please let the rest of us know.
Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

It's harder to find the right balance after you've been drinking on the job.

 

Speak for yourself, lightweight.

 

I have a bottle of 23-year-old Evan Williams bourbon in my desk that says you're wrong.

 

I must have had too much.

I'm seeing double.

 

You'll be broke and really hurting.

 

If you're new SE came from a daily, why is he so crazy over gamers? I figured p.m's were more feature-heavy, seeing as how the games are going on 24-hours old before the paper comes out.

At our place, we've started a weekly preps page that includes a 15-20 inch feature, a notes column, a quote of the week, performance of the week, game of the week and stat of the week, and we do a little preview on the upcoming week. That, coupled with some daily game coverage, plus one or two nice midweek features, and I'd say we cover the gamut pretty well.

Does it please all of our readers? Of course not, unless the 20-inch feature is on their kid. But I think it does a nice job breaking the monotony. And if we can maintain that page covering 11 schools, you could easily do so with 30.

 

Lem,

When you say "a little preview on the upcoming week" does that mean most of your copy is retracing what happened the past week via the notes, performance and game of the week?

Also, you're a daily?

 

If you're any good, yes. But most p.m.s (tee hee) are small, and most SEs running them suck. They're either young, or they're not very good and very set in their ways. Rare is the PM SE who breaks out of the gamer/color-by-numbers feature/preview mindset. And at a 5K, you're probably talking someone who's only capable of game stories.

 

Lem,

When you say "a little preview on the upcoming week" does that mean most of your copy is retracing what happened the past week via the notes, performance and game of the week?

Also, you're a daily?


The performance and game of the week retrace the past week, but we put timely stuff in the notebook and the feature is timely, too.

Yes, we're a daily, and we only do the page every Thursday.

 

Sounds like its well done. My only concern is come Thursday, when people turn to that page how much are they thinking about Friday or Saturday's big game?

 

Typically, we try and gear the feature toward something happen over the next couple days. This week, for example, we did two features - we zone the page for the east and west sections of the county - and one was on a weightlifter because the state finals are on Saturday. Another was on a basketball player because the regional playoffs begin tonight. So we try and recap people on the week that was, alert people on what's happening now and then spin the readers forward by telling them what to look to next week.