It's 2013, have you killed your MLB page yet?

We tried cutting the MLB page two years ago ... didn't go over well, despite the complete lack of pro teams within six hours of here.

The sales folks went out and sold a sponsorship for the page each day. I just got word that's going to continue this year.

We also just moved to a five-day schedule with no Saturday or Monday paper, but with a Sunday edition. With extremely early deadlines, we won't get any Saturday boxes and I'm not running two-day old boxes, so the plan is to recreate some of those old Sunday baseball pages that drew many of us in when we were kids.

We'll see how it goes.

 

Don't be afraid to edit a box just as you would a roundup. Just because it's included doesn't mean it has to stay.

Runners moved up, runners left in scoring position, etc., can be whacked.

Some may disagree, but I also have no problem whacking pitchers from the batting order who are only in there as part of a double switch and had no chance of ever coming to the plate.

Seeing 6 relievers with 0 0 0 0 next to their names in the batting order is a sure way to add an inch to every box score.

 

I like this idea a lot.

 

I always enjoy seeing who's on The Mendoza line.

 

I think it's worked out pretty well. An ad stripped across the top and bottom of the page. It's not intrusive, but it's one of the only ads I always notice.

While the baseball page ad wasn't my idea, I told the powers that be the only way I'd run NFL boxes and summaries this past fall was if they sold an NFL page for Mondays. They did.

 

I agree, it's not the same. But if you're an East Coast paper and not getting a third of the boxes, anyway, with stupid early deadlines, why bother?

And I disagree with the 40-year-old wanting a box in the paper. I'd up that line to 50.

 

Added for your (and readers) enjoyment:

http://overnightbaseball.blogspot.com/2013/03/late-baseball-march-26-2013.html

 

I agree with all of this, especially the pitchers who never bat late in NL games. I'd also delete the list of umps.

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As far as baseball page or not, I'd keep it if possible. It's one of the reasons people subscribe to the paper.

Depressing as this sounds, at our shop, we long ago dropped the "change around the print product to attract younger readers" initiative and have stuck with "keep running what our current readers want to see."

Initiatives for the younger readers are tried in our various online offerings (web site, PDF pages, twitter feed, etc.)

 

First things first: Hi. Can I get anyone a beer?

Some may, but they are a rapidly vanishing species. Wireless penetration is <a href="http://www.ctia.org/advocacy/research/index.cfm/aid/10323">greater than 100%</a>. Half of all mobile devices <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/smartphones-account-for-half-of-all-mobile-phones-dominate-new-phone-purchases-in-the-us.html">are smartphones</a>, and 2 of every three 3 mobile units sold today <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/two-thirds-of-new-mobile-buyers-now-opting-for-smartphones.html">is a smartphone</a>. About a third of those <a href="http://socialtimes.com/nielsens-smartphone-usage-by-age-groups-study-intriguing-age-group-differences-for-blackberry-and-windows-phone_b83254">older than 50 own a smartphone</a>, and the adoption rate among the 45+ set is about the same as in other age groups. I presume a large share of people who buy these devices intend to use their functions, such as MLB At Bat, which provides more extensive box scores than any newspaper ever did.

Also: tablets. They're kinda popular.

The issue isn't whether people want printed box scores, or would like to see a printed story about a local kid. Of course they do, and of course they would.

The issue is whether they will pay for those boxes and that story, because the cost of the printed story is way higher than the cost of the digital story.

No matter how much people may want to see stories in print, the fact is the cost of filling, designing, printing and delivering a daily printed newspaper is beyond ridiculous, and made sense only because for generations advertisers subsidized the cost very nearly 100 percent. That subsidy is gone. You may really enjoy printed box scores, but that does not change the fact that near-real-time information expensively arranged and printed on expensive paper and brought to your door before sunrise 7/365 -- that is a luxury service compared to infinitely more efficient digital methods now preferred by the people who used to subsidize the cost of your paper. Your continued print habit, and all the pleasure it brings you, should cost you far more than you ever paid for any newspaper before.

It's fine to give current readers what they want to see; it's better to keep customers than to lose them. But, unless your shop has found the formula to stop the double-digit ad-revenue declines afflicting the entire industry (page sponsorships alone haven't been able to do it), someone needs to figure out who's going to pay to keep printing what readers want to see.

 

Pretty much. About all I do anymore is local/regional universities. NFL is manageable because it's mostly on Sundays, with one game on Monday or Thursday nights.

It's all about the space the boxscores require. If I were close to a team geographically, I'd run that team's stuff. But 15 boxes requires the majority of a page. And it's pretty much every bleepin' day.

 

Sounds like he's got a bright future in newspapers.

 

The only thing agate and the printed model have on their side is the time you save as a reader by using them.

My eyes move faster than the constant tapping back and forth, moving from box to box. Would it save five minutes in the morning? Probably.

Is that worth it? Dunno.