Football coverage at a weekly

If you're covering the same team(s) as a daily...you have to find a different way of covering those teams. Offer something different, more in-depth, etc. Don't just rehash the same coverage that the daily is doing.

 

We're weekly and we do daily coverage on the web. We've gotten used to it, but it definitely has been a challenge. Our print deadlines (multiple zoned editions) are during the day, and that makes for a very early wake-up call the morning after coverage of night games. But it also helps us to look for second-day angles we can write for print, rather than just dumping the game story into the paper.

 

Yes, love the papers that offer a better free product on the web, than they offer to their paid subscribers in print. Our business model is beyond broken.

 

Versatile, I love the recommendations. Would do them all if I was at a weekly with only one paper and a small group of schools to put out.
Unfortunately, I'm at a chain of weeklies with eight schools and six different papers. We have another full-timer, two at our sister paper who get us crossover games and our two former sports guys (including schieza) do a couple games a week.
Basically, we need a minimum of five stories per paper so the front doesn't look like ass. When we had three full-timers, I was doing roundups for the two papers I was responsible four, but now most weeks I'm writing 7-10 stories, shooting 4-6 games and then having 10-14 pages to lay out. Not good times.

 

That's why I included the "if space, time and staff permit" clause. I have never worked full-time for a weekly, but I worked for one in college and know a few people who work for them. What I've found is that every weekly is unique in its challenges. There are some weeklies with five-man sports staffs and others with five-man newsroom staffs.

 

Versatile, I just hate reading posts like yours because it makes me imagine what it would be like if we had a full staff. Honestly, if I had one more full-timer, it would save me probably 12 hours of work, which would allow me to do all those things you posted about.

 

Already a bunch of great suggestions on here, young-gun.

But since you are your own photog, do all you can to get great art at the game. Chances are it's something the daily papers won't have, unless one of your prep and/or semipro teams is really good.

Even if you're putting gamers online, there's time after the game ends to get scoring plays, quotes, stats, etc. You can only get photos during the football game. Try to get the best equipment your shop can afford and put yourself in the right position to get great photos, and readers will notice.

And if you cover several schools, try to rotate between them and shoot everybody in your coverage area at least once a season (not always possible, I know). In my days at a weekly, I always tried to make sure if I shot one school for, say, football, I had volleyball or cross-country pics from a different school the same week.

 

We started doing a hybrid story format in 2010. This past year we continued it, emphasizing more the preview of the next game, and making sure to get agate. We also did web recaps Friday nights, with my goal being to have those up before the Friday night football highlights were on TV.
The exception to the hybrid format was when my boss covered a game (the team his son plays for, but that's another story): he would do the old-school drive-by-drive poorly written recap, throw in a quote from the coach about the game and call it good. Of course, he was the one screaming at us to add the preview parts to stories.

 

We have a three-man newsroom staff

 

I agree.

 

I wish we had a three-man newsroom staff for our weekly.

 

You're telling me two people write, edit, shoot and design an entire weekly newspaper at your shop? I'd never heard of a shop with fewer than four.