Football Tab: Running Thread

Do I give a good shit what you think? No, I don't.

 

Our football tabs are about the only special sections making money, so on they go -- at about the same size as last year (somewhere in the range of 70 pages once you count all the sections and zoned HS editions) -- despite a much smaller staff, extra Olympics coverage and much tighter deadlines across the board. It's bring your sleeping bag to work month.

 

Boss man sounds like a dream to work for. By working on your own time, does that mean that he wanted you to work on your off day or take it on the chin and do the work for free. Hopefully you have an updated resume.

 

nope.

 

I finished all my stories Friday. We'll put it together Tuesday and Wednesday for Thursday distribution.

Our football section is the one special section that makes money. People start calling in mid July "When's the football preview coming out?"
News/advertising can't figure out why it makes money but their Lawn Care, Car Care, Whatever Care, etc. pieces of crap don't.

If you had to rank everything we cover/have in the paper throughout the year in terms of interest and priority, high school and college football is top of the list by a mile. It's not even close.

 

40K shop. Our college tab was eliminated this year because advertising can't sell it. Prep tab was scaled way back (24 to 16 pages). We have three DIs (two FBS, one FCS), so we're devoting a page each day this week to each of those schools, plus a page for their conferences. Do the best with what you have, and all that ...

 

We put our 72 page prep football tab to bed Sunday and it is a money maker. We cover 23 schools. College tab makes a profit too, but we eliminated the pro tab, they couldn't sell it. That 10 days when all the copy has to be written and edited and everything laid out is certainly a bitch, especially when you're trying to get everything done for the daily section too. Luckily they pay us OT.

 

I've got it bit easier than most of you.
Our paper covers eight schools, six of which have football. However, they all have volleyball, boys and girls cross country, golf (some also with a girls golf team) and one has tennis.
It's a 48-page tab, with a feature story (this year on the quarterback at one of the in-town schools who'll end up owning just about every record there) plus feature stories and team pics for each sport at the two in-town schools and info capsules and team pics for all of the sports at the other six schools.
I do the writing and most of the photos, with help on the pics when there're are conflicting times.
Always popular with fans and advertisers, though it's a bear to get done.
Good news -- it's done and comes out Wednesday.

 

We're a 20K daily and cover seven 4A and 5A schools, and four area schools.

Our tab last year was 20 pages, 26 the year before that. I'm assuming it'll be around that same number this year too.

We generally do team previews with info capsules on all 11 teams, with two big double-truck features.

This year, one is on the realignment that split the seven local schools, and two premier QBs coming off ACL injuries.

 

Ours was cancelled. Just as well considering the "tab" was going to be a glorified insert.

 

My old paper is a 42k (Sunday) paper that covers around 65 football schools. The section was 36 broadsheet pages until two years ago when I convinced management to bump it up to 44, all color. That gave us two covers and more space to do cool stuff with rather than the normal previews, etc. Plus, management absolutely refused to let loose of team photos of really local schools (around 35-40), so I was able to get extra space to accommodate for those and push them to the back of the section.

At my new place, it's 48 pages to encompass to Division I schools and high schools. The paper covers every high school in the state, and we're working on zoned high school previews this week. Our main section comes out on Sunday.

 

Six schools here, but only two with football, so ours is a "fall sports" tab. Not sure how many pages we have, because it's not printing until the end of the month. Certainly not as many as the local 15k daily's Football Edition -- their prep/college/pro combo, due out a week from Thursday, normally clocks in at 64.