Getting co-workers at a twice-weekly to get into daily mindset

cycling, good stuff.

Basically, if they're not going to get off their asses, let them know in no uncertain terms that there are starving sportswriters in North America right this second who can more than adequately fill their positions.

 

If you have young reporters, don't be afraid to require them to write daily or even as it happens, even if you're at a weekly.

The message probably gets through more effectively if you're the boss and *you're* writing daily at a weekly. I'd write gamers for a game I covered even if it wasn't going in this week's or next week's paper, then I'd post it to the Web. If it was the only game I could get to, I'd expand on it with other information. If I had other games that week, I'd do a roundup or I'd just do one of the later games for next week's paper.

When I covered a murder trial, I'd race back to the office and file a story for the Web site pretty much every day. I'd then do a recap of what happened that week for the print edition.

I'd also tease the regular updates in the print edition to tell readers that the Web site isn't just a few stories from that week's paper.

 

I went from a paper where we basically wrote whenever we felt like it (or whenever there was a game -- it was very, very, very gamer-centric, and news-side had the "no meeting, no story" mindset) to one where the publisher demanded we have something local every day ("why am I paying two sportswriters if they're not writing?" ... uh, maybe because we're paginating and taking our own pictures).

My mindset had to change.

Immediately, the thought became: "I need something every day. What can I do?" EVERY DAY has to be the mindset, or four days a week, whatever. They have daily deadlines -- if they cover a game, they have to have filed a story by midnight (or 9 a.m. the next morning, or whatever ... you have to have a firm deadline). If you have a feature assigned, it has to be done by 9 p.m. on the day it's due.

At a PM daily, we used to just come in and write in the morning. Then, they moved our deadlines up, and we got into the mode of writing after the event and having our stories filed by the time we showed up in the morning to paginate. People are going to write to their expectations -- if the expectation is the stories are filed by 10 a.m. twice a week, then they're going to wait until the last minute. If the expectation is that stories are done at 10:20 p.m. every night, they'll be done on time.

As far as getting into the mindset and the routine of writing daily, it's usually fairly easy to segment your work. Friday nights are always going to be prep football or basketball gamers. In our area, Tuesday & Thursday nights are heavy prep nights, so you generally know those will likely be slotted for game coverage. We used to use the Thursday paper for prep football/basketball features & previews (Wed. was a light night). That leaves the weekend and Monday night to have to fill with features. Spread them around, assign everyone 1 feature and a couple of games a week (and maybe a notes package on a specific school/sport) and go with it.