Golf coverage in the new newspaper world

What, your copy desk can't insert the nut graf about how Billy Bob grew up in East Bumfuck and lettered four times at Nearby University?

It's a Masters gamer story. You need to tell readers how your guy held off Tiger by making consecutive birdies at 14 and 15. And that's what AP is going to give you.

It's 2008. If you're still spending two grand to send your guy <i>just in case</i> Billy Bob from East Bumfuck wins, then your paper deserves to assume room temperature sooner rather than later.

Sorry to be a jerk about it, but hardly anyone can afford to spend money on something that AP or one of the other news services can provide. Get over it, guys. This isn't 1985 anymore.

 

Some people are so myopic. If you are eligible for credentials for this event, I would suggest you go.

This, local, local, local angle is of course being overdone. If I have a local story done by a writer on the high school pitcher or an AP story on the Masters, what is getting read?

No way can you kill your section any quicker than not give your local take on stories of interest.

How about we:

1. Cover major events if it is feasible and makes sense (not sure I would send someone cross country unless it was a major major metro like 200,000 or more.) I like the columnist going to an event like the Masters.

2. DEMAND BETTER COPY FROM OUR WRITERS AND COLUMNISTS.

3. Stop this extreme contraction of national news in local papers. Just because I live in a town doesn't mean I care about the local high school team. I don't have a kid on the team. Give me the mets.

The move by the local, local, local crowd is to niche the publication. Yes, I understand that the strength of a local story will carry a paper, but I still think that a majority of the people still like one stop shopping with their news. Whatever happened to appealing to a broad audience? No way kills a section more than going hyper local.

What I am talking about is Masters on page 2 with a photo refer out front and Podunk's 4-2 high school baseball win over winless Podunk Prep as the lead story.

UGHHHHHH!!!!!!

Readers like it when a local guy is at a national story. It makes them feel important and connected to the paper and the reader. And yes, the people notice...

 

Bingo. Then, if your reporter - and if not, your paper - is worth its salt, it has the guy's phone number already. Call him up.

 

Yep.

 

The AJC, which I believe is still in the hometown of an NFL team, sent one person to the Super Bowl. After hearing that, I'm not shocked to learn that the SF Chronicle and the Oregonian declined to staff the Masters. While I'm sure the Des Moines Register was dismayed it didn't have anybody in Augusta to cover Johnson's victory, that's a hindsight-20/20 sort of thing. Who really saw that one coming?
Here's another question: Can Augusta National afford to maintain its arcane credentialing policy, in which outlets that don't staff it in any year are excommunicated for years and years thereafter?

 

If Zach Johnson was so important to the Register, they would have had his contact info and tried to get hold of him after each round. Or they would have had some way to contact his relatives/friends in Cedar Rapids and have a story with that angle in Monday's paper.

There are a lot of papers that can't get credentials to the Masters. It requires some creative thinking to get around that, but it can be done.

It makes more sense for most papers the Register's size to devote resources to covering local golf than it does to covering a major.

 

Much easier said than done, I'd imagine. My guess is it'd be a bitch to try and get in touch with the guy leading the Masters on Saturday night.

Maybe he's a great guy who loves his hometown, or maybe he's got his own Al Jones on the staff. But I'd bet you'd never hear from him til, like, Wednesday of the following week. If you were lucky.

and forgive me for not buying this "no one can afford to send anyone anywhere anymore." they sure as hell can. They just won't. (JRC excepted)

 

I know it might not be easy. But if a reporter already has a relationship with a guy, that makes it easier. (And you'd figure the Register should have one with Johnson, considering how many/few pro golfers from Iowa there are. Certainly the Cedar Rapids Gazette does. Were they in Augusta when he won?)

 

I agree with you, but I'm sure you've heard as many tales of hometown guys who aren't as quick to return phone calls once they reach the big time.

I just picture the Gazette reporter waiting by the phone all night Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

 

I hear ya. I've been on the waiting end of that phone a few times. But we've had some golfers from our area do well on tour, and we've been tight enough with them that getting hold of them after each round, even the final one, hasn't been a problem.

 

Honestly, couldn't you "cover" the Masters just as well from your own couch or desk as you could from the press tent?
I know it's a little Jayson Blairish, but I have seen columnists write about events they watched on television.
The Oregonian sent Canzano to the Final Four and he more than made it worth the effort with his work on the Oregon State hiring situation and Kevin Love. Don't know if you need a gamer from a local guy.
By the same token, if it's a local team and you don't send a crew to a national championship that you plan to play big, it looks pretty bad.

 

The Cedar Rapids Gazette was in Augusta when Zach Johnson won. In defense of the Register, Johnson's record in the majors wasn't very impressive heading into Masters weekend. In hindsight, yeah it looks like a bad decision. But when they made the call, who could have guessed he would have won. They made the call they thought was right at the time.

(By the way, the Register and Gazette were at this year's Masters).

When Todd Hamilton (who grew up 10 miles from here) won the British Open, we weren't there. We tried like hell to get a hold of him for three days (he moved into contention on Friday and into the lead on Saturday) but couldn't. So we improvised _ we expanded the wire story with additional quotes from his pressers (the video was available online), we did sidebars on family and friends, and on Sunday, we had a reporter doing a story from Hamilton's home golf course, where everybody was crowded into the small pro shop/dining area to watch the tournament. We finally got a hold of him, if I remember correctly, after he got back into the U.S. a couple of days later.

Since then, we've covered him at Midwest tournaments (one is only an 80-minute drive from here) and when the PGA Championship was in Wisconsin a couple of years ago, we went there. We actually had some discussions about going to the British Open the year after he won (logistically and financially, it would have been a major headache). We also talked about going to the Masters, but we were going to have to jump through a lot of hoops to get credentials.

If we can go somewhere and cover him, we do it.