How much is your shop cutting travel?

Some Guy made a good point about why you shouldn't stop covering the Mariners/Pirates/Royals/Padres/Giants. Those are the teams likely to go through some changes and being there that last month is where you start doing the legwork for the offseason.

 

To answer the thread question: A. Lot.

But with all the airline hassles, I'm not shedding any tears over it, although it is playing hell with my Marriott points. Think I'd rather be a resident of Gitmo than deal with airports/airlines nowadays.

 

Hard to apply those rules across all platforms.

For instance, would you really suggest the Lexington Herald-Leader not cover college basketball until conference play?

I'd cut most travel without a local angle. Most of the golf coverage -- The Masters, U.S. Open, Ryder Cup -- is a waste of money. Olympics would be out -- nothing but an ego thing for columnists to horde APSEs. Unless there's a local angle, I wouldn't cover the Super Bowl, the BCS Championship game, the Final Four, the All-Star games, the NBA Finals, the World Series, etc.

 

Yeah, on something like that, that's the biggest no-brainer ever...

 

That's when you sit the beat writer down and say, "Pick a trip to skip." and let them make the decision.

 

Regarding Beijing and the need to cover local athletes: It's not like most of these local athletes are major celebs, right? So you do your groundwork heading toward the Olympics (as in, the last couple of years). Then you get phone numbers and backup phone numbers for the people involved, and you give them all of your contact info too. Maybe e-mail is the best bet, given international cell phone difficulties. You develop enough rapport to get them to contact you after their big events, and you write off of that without spending a dime on overseas travel and herd journalism.

It's not like you're trying to get Tiger Woods to dial you up. These athletes tend to be more accessible anyway, and welcome the coverage. And you know what? If they don't follow through and you don't have a localized story in the paper, do you really think that is going to cost you any subscribers or ad revenue? That is, any more than what cutting back in other major areas would cost you, compared to a once-in-four-years event?

Hey, it's one possible approach that would CYA regarding the local yokel pull.

 

I've done this with my olympic hopefuls and it's amazing how seamlessly it works. One kid, I saw on-line that he had finished second in his quarterfinal, advancing to the semis. i called his cell and he told me he actually as third in his quarterfinal race to advance. turns out, somebody had been DQ'd in his race, he was just leaving the mix zone and didn't know, so I saw it online before he even knew his true finish. Hey, in a perfect world, I'd be there. But if you do the legwork beforehand, you can write a perfectly good story without being there. What you'll miss is the color and the drama, and that sucks. But it's better than nothing. and most of the readers, not being up on dateline protocol, don't even know you're not there

 

The L.A. Times considers itself the U.S. paper of record on the Olympics, and it's a great legacy they have, but I can't help but feel that sending the usual army to Beijing is somehow out of whack with 150 newsroom cuts that are about to come down.

 

A question I've asked before:

Do readers want to read about the Olympics?

 

And while I'm not a broad defender of the modern Olympiad, will ask:

Are not the socieological aspects of each Olympics at least as important as what eminates out of the agate?