Football Tab: Running Thread

We got our dummies yesterday and I am already 16 of 40 pages in. I'm on fi-yah.

Better yet, we got our press deadline moved a day later.

That'll give me an extra day to fix the inevitable snafus: Last year, for instance, the pages were sized wrong and I had to resize all 40 of those bad boys.

No horror stories this year (so far), but the week is young.

 

JUST fnished our 40-page broadsheet section... (thank God).

Now, I get to wait for the press to totally fuck up the cover... so I've got that going for me.

 

Got an SE job in late July, by early August had a meeting to decide whether we would either have a tab. Not only will we have one, but it will be zoned to four areas. And I had about two weeks to get all the copy done because dummies come Monday and publication is Wednesday.

Nightmare? Well, let's just say I'm a tad bit nervous today...

 

I'll bet there are a couple papers in Florida where if they scaled back their football tabs, jobs could have been saved...

 

As a writer who doesn't have to deal with layout, my tab experience has been much easier than you guys deal with. However, I had to do three previews of local teams, get the rosters, do three "two-minute drills" where we ask the players weird non-football questions, go to the first practices, write a 30" story on the first practices, and finished all that crap up on an off-day because boss man told me I might have to do it on my own time. Since I'm the office n00b, I did it at home for eight hours on one of my off days. Then he scheduled me for office work three days the next week so I could finish it.

 

IF???

 

No tab this year.

I got here at the beginning of June and knew a tab would be unlikely (something about advertising being pushed enough as it is to sell ads, and shouldn't they focus on the daily product and not special sections). We went the series route, and we're about half-way through with games starting Friday.

I suspect we'll do the same thing for basketball, even though this is Indiana (Hi, Tom Crean). We'll be better prepared for that one, though, since I've had since June to brainstorm and plan.

 

30-inch stories on high school football. Doesn't that seem like overkill?

 

Depends where you're at and what type of story it is.

He said it was a first practice story, so it could be a quick hitter, where you visit 3-4 teams on the first day and write 8-10 on each one.

 

I hope you laughed in his face at that one.

 

Started designing our 48-page tab Thursday and pretty much finished up last night. I'll make corrections and put the finishing touches on it Monday and send it Tuesday as soon as all the ads are made and put onto the pages. Pages must be sent by 5 p.m., which means I'll be waiting until 4:55 for a few straggling ads. Lovely.

I know one very large and prominent paper on the East Coast scrapped its football tab because it couldn't sell ads. Instead, it ran 9 pages of preview in their daily section.

Would I complain if our paper went that route? Can't say I would.

 

I think our tab is either going to lose money this year, or not net enough to make it worth doing anymore.

A 2 col x 2" ad is going for $48 this year, and most of those are local banks who buy a little ad for every team, probably at a bulk rate (Go Tigers! Go Eagles! etc.) This year, our ad department couldn't sell the back cover.

If they grossed more than $2,000 in ads this year, I'd be shocked. When you factor in the miles that writers and photographers drive to these schools, the time spent writing stories (or paying stringers to write some) and the time spent designing pages, $2,000 doesn't go a long way.

I'd rather do a "media tour" thing and do a half-page a day on a local team every day leading up to kickoff. We did that to a limited extent before, but too many schools clustered their picture / media days too close together and too late into two-a-days to be able to do it right.