How much is your shop cutting travel?

Agreed. Especially baseball or football. Even though yes, it might not make sense to cover a team that's 30 games out of first and is hopelessly out of it, you don't want to give fans that follow that team another reason to cancel their subscription or go elsewhere for their news.

 

Boy the Olympics really transformed Atlanta, didn't it?

 

Someone needs to explain to me why any paper would spend one dime to send people to either Eugene or Bejing.

AP covers the Olympics tremendously well and to me, at this point in newspapers, it is a really unneccessary expense and frankly it is to the point where some papers just do it because their editors think it makes them look big time.

 

Some of covering the Olympics is a big dick-swinging contest, but sometimes there are reasons.

The biggest reason is because of locals. My paper is going and while there will certainly be some staff produced coverage of the big events of the day, much if it will focus on the locals we'll have there. My guess is that we'll have 20 or so locals.

The worst thing that can happen to a paper not staffing the Olympics is to have a local finish fourth. No medal probably means no mention in the AP story. But it might still a big deal in your town. Then you're screwed.

 

On the subject of late-season baseball coverage, I agree up to a point.

You may have a shitty, horrible team, but you never know when something memorable such as a no-hitter, perfect game, four-homer game, cycle...etc. may happen. If you miss that, that's a big slap in the face to the reader.

 

But at a time when cutting expenses is like primary on every bosses mind -- wouldn't this be the place to start?

I mean, I am getting a kick out of the brasses decision-making.

We recently were told we'd not be staffing an All-Star game in the middle of the state involving, oh I don't know, 20 local kids or so plus numerous kids signed to play at one of our local universities - an event we have staffed for 20-some years since its inception.

The total cost of the thing -- with two nights in a hotel and the gas and a few meals -- was usually about $300 bucks (I mean, hotel was like $75 a night).

So we save $300 bucks for a game of local interest with lots of local players and players of local interest.

Yet, we have a writer in Eugene, who is also going to Bejing, who also went to Indy or wherever for the swimming trials and at least one other place for some kind of trials (it escapes me right now) -- and we have to the best of my knowledge not one local athlete at any of it, or perhaps one -- and few people in these parts give a rat's ass about the Olympics. But yet, we are going to spend in the neighborhood of $20,000 to cover these trials and the Olympics while "cutting out" the $300 for a trip that makes sense to cover (and no, I don't cover the all star game ever, so I am not bitching about something I cover being cut, I am bitching about how silly our priorities are....)

And the bottom line is -- covering the Olympics makes us look good, we might win a few APSE awards for our coverage and our bosses can still hold their head high at their tea and crumpets parties with other editors at places like APSE conventions......

 

I don't often agree with zag on anything, but that post nailed it.

 

Oh wait -- and here is the best part of that story....

We paid a stringer $125 for a gamer and notebook (on the all star game instead of sending a staffer) and $50 for an advance from the availability session the day before.

So in short -- we paid $175 to have the event covered anyway, meaning, we "saved" a whopping $125 or so, or roughly the equivalent of the amount of money our "Olympics" writer will spend in parking at the airport during the three weeks of the Olympics (about $6 per day for about 21 days).......

That's brilliant, but hey, we might win some mostly meaningless and arbitrary award at next year's APSE convention.....

 

nothing of ours has been cut, but we have to get any event we're covering outside our county approved by the ME. and we are a 15k daily with that big daily in louisville delivering in a lot of our county.

 

Yes, there are cuts being made. Are they slashing everything? No.

I could ramble endlessly about some of the dumbass choices being made with money at my paper, but here's my question - If you get creative, and you get tons of hotel/airfare deals e-mailed to you regularly with major discounts, aren't those cards you can play in your favor?? I'd think it would make sense to snag them now, and save tons of money down the road (make budgetary cuts, but still serve your readers and do it with some degree of fiscal responsibility).

 

Nice post, Zag, and you're right about the fucked-up priorities.

"Can't go there, money's tight" and they save $100 or $200. They get in a snit about a meal expense during basketball season.

But they OK a writer to go to the trials and China for one or two local athletes and spend $6,000 to $10,000? That just doesn't make good sense.

 

Absolutely dead on.