Inland Empire implosion

He has minions everywhere.

 

I spent one stint at The Sun (we also put out the sports section of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin) in 2005-06. Just at the Sun we had three or four prep reporters, someone who covered the Class AAA games, Paul O. doing columns and Jeff Gluck and the SE covering auto racing. Plus a shitload of us on the desk.

While I was there, we moved from the downtown office, where you could see a homeless man pissing on a Dumpster across the street -- plus have a huge rat smack your chair with its thick tail, PLUS see a bat flying through the office on the last night there. We moved into a gleaming new office off the 15 (I think) that was about half full at its height.

It's sad to see what has happened to a pretty good paper.

 

And let's be honest, he really does the greater LA area not all of So Cal. He's not getting games south of Orange County or north of the Grapevine unless it's a big crossover or a state playoff game.

That said, he still has a shitload of schools to get results for.

 

Just spitballing here, but doesn't prep coverage = the younger readers they seek? Or is someone looking at the analytics and saying "Everyone reads about the Dodgers/Lakers/USC-UCLA, let's double down on them." I'll take my answer off the air.

 

The P.E. was a great paper as recently as the late 2000s, 100K-plus circulation daily that covered all the major beats (Lakers, Dodgers, Angels, UCLA, USC, etc) and won multiple APSE awards every year. Now after multiple sales (A.H. Belo to Freedom to Digital First) it's been reduced to a small-town community newsletter.

Allan Steele, the PE's colleges writer and David Zink, former sports editor/columnist, took buyouts. So did Jeff Parenti, who was splitting a preps/coordinator role. Also they had Gabriel Rizk relocate to take a job on the SCNG universal desk in Monrovia earlier in the summer. They'd also had a few other writers leave to take other jobs in the past year or two and never filled the positions. Zink, Steele and Parenti had probably close to 60 years experience between them covering Riverside County and had community ties that were irreplaceable for breaking news and finding features.

Believe that leaves Eric-Paul Johnson, Landon Negri (preps) and Jim Alexander (columnist) as the only full-time sports staffers left at the PE. Three. It was triple that size two years ago. PE had a sports staff of over 40 as recently as the mid-2000s.

Not sure exactly what went down at the Sun. Pete Marshall and Michelle Gardner were really doing it all by themselves. Haven't seen anything announcing they're leaving.

Either way, just a sad, sad development for all.

 

What younger readers? Kids just follow each other's Twitter/Snapchat feeds and get the scoops there. It's on teh socials medium, so it must be true.

 

I was told the goal was to get down to three full-time writers between the Sun and PE, but they may have eventually figured out a way to save a fourth position. The people who worked at the PE when it was the only paper in the country to staff three major-league teams (Dodgers and Angels, plus Padre home games) must be in disbelief. Heck, just consider that the PE, as of a few years ago, counted more than 90 high schools in its coverage area. Good luck on football Fridays.

 

There isn't enough demand for preps coverage outside the state of Texas, and even there it's only in demand for the local team. Preps do not attract the eyes and the clicks that the pros do. You can kiss them goodbye from just about all major print media eventually. They'll still be important to those people playing and coaching and the hometown fans, and they'll be covered on Facebook by fans with pictures, scores and stats.

I have been to plenty of high school games where fans, coaches, etc. are doing the stats on their phones as the game goes along. Why would newspapers bother when not enough people care to read it and others are doing it, blogging it, tweeting it, ect. for free? You can kiss preps goodbye.

 

This statement is just jaw-dropping. Holy shit.