Jonesboro Sun Layoffs

I hear you Football but never say never.

 

Yeah, what he said ... the Paxton operation doesn't have a creative director or team leaders, so they seem pretty happy to have each paper look like the others ... in fact, the whole design hub operation is being run by the news and sports editors of the Owensboro paper (at least in the hiring of the new/replacement designers ... and don't ask me if they're happy with that arrangement; I know I wouldn't be without a BIG uptick in salary, but that's not going to happen with Paxton) ...

 

That's newspapers at most small and medium markets. Why pay someone 35K when you can get someone for 20K?

I would think they would almost HAVE to standardize like that. Otherwise they'd need as many people at the hubs as they had previously.

Damn, those glitches. Technology just ain't all it's cracked up to be sometimes.

Never understood why high school football was some sort of sacred cow. I've been at papers that pushed back deadline an hour every night during HS football season. But basketball, hockey, the World Series? No way. Look, I used to routinely cover games that ended at 10 p.m. and I'd have my stuff filed by 10:45, and that included a 10-15-minute drive from stadium/arena to the office. Last place I worked, I'd see sports guys walk in the door at 11:30 and I'd just roll my eyes. Part of working in sports is being able to write fast on deadline. Many, many, many times, I'd be out the door 10 minutes after the final buzzer. Took me longer to drive back to office than it did to write the damn thing OR type the stats. Never asked anyone to hold a deadline for me as a writer.

 

Because HS football has huge local interest everywhere on a family level, a business level, a community level and beyond. Not a good idea to mess with that.

 

And the other sports do not?

Again, and I say this as someone who has done it plenty, there's no reason you need 90 minutes - 2 hours after the final buzzer to file a 12-to-15-inch game story. You basically write the story as the game progresses -- either on your laptop or in your head (which I did because back when I started, there were no laptops) and then fill in with quotes and stats.

If you are sitting there when the buzzer sounds and you have no real idea what you are going to write, you are in deep, deep shit. Every once in a while, you will get an earth-jarring postgame quote "Those damn referees cost us the district title tonight" and, sure, you can adjust to go with that. But that's the exception rather than the rule. Most of the teams and coaches I covered I knew so well, I could pretty well predict what they were going to say before I did the interview.

My point is, if you prepare properly, you can get your stuff in less than an hour after the game ends and not keep the entire pressroom sitting around an extra hour waiting on YOU.

 

I always thought the extra time for HS football was not for the benefit of reporters staffing games, but because of the volume of calls, the calls that trickle in late, tracking down results if your shop did that, and making sure to get as much in as possible to make it more attractive for people who pick up the Saturday paper primarily to get the HS football rundown.

 

This ... at most of the Paxton papers, the people covering the games are also the ones who are laying out the pages ... counting travel time to and from games, that amounts to a roughly 3.5-4 hour gap in which nothing gets done as far as layout or copy editing ... using page templates (which we did) and pre-designing inside pages (for jumps, wire roundups, etc) can only make up so much of that gap ...

 

Trying to staff a night game and layout the section is a recipe for disaster... period.

I understand what you are saying about the roundups/phoners. We deal with that in other sports, too, you know. Only argument I can see is that football games start too late, take too long, end too late.

 

And I think it's lip service, to some extent. The bosses aren't going to give an extra hour for 4 months worth of basketball at 4 nights per week. They can cave for a dozen or so football nights with a later deadline, give the sports staff the impression they care, and get on with their lives.

 

I've visited the fair burg of Jonesboro a couple of times and my impression of the paper has been, "they aren't even trying anymore." You have to wonder why they're even publishing at this point.

If I lived there I'd probably subscribe to the Commercial-Appeal.

 

When I started working at The Sun they had a sports staff of five full-timers and two part-timers plus 2-3 stringers. In my time there the staff went from five to four full-timer plus one part-time person. Now they have just three full-timers and no part-time help.

I'm not not sure if they are going to be able to continue what they were even doing in sports now with just a staff of three. They've had one person devoted to covering Arkansas State for sometime, but I'm wondering if that is even going to continue.

And Armchair, the Commercial-Appeal wouldn't give you much in the way of news about Arkansas.

 

What's their circ now?

Of course, if they are no longer paginating, that eliminates the need for at least one position (which is probably the purpose).