Las Vegas Review-Journal/Dan Wheldon

I know some who do. I know some who don't.

Now what?

 

I bookmark stuff too, but when the Red Sox stuff went down, I went to Boston.com because I knew it would have everything, packaged and centerpieced on the homepage.
Big breaking news always goes on the main homepage, and if done correctly has every link you need. Boston probably has a web staff capable of reproducing those stories on its sports page in a relatively timely fashion. I'm guessing Las Vegas does not, especially on a Sunday. I worked at three 250K circs in NFL cities, and the last one had a web staff of one on NFL Sundays and handed off to the copy desk every night.

 

Who cares what day it is? Are we not in the business of responding to news?

 

Nail on head. News is news. I don't think desks at small podunk papers at 10:30 p.m. May 1 were saying, "Fuck it, bin Laden's dead but no one's here to update the site."

We had no one in, and I high-tailed it into the office. Because it's my job.

 

When I first clicked on this thread and saw what it was about, my next thought was, I hope I can get all the way through 2+ pages without ANYONE writing this off as "a bad day" or intimating "anyone can miss something."

Hey, it just doesn't work here.

You don't have a major story land on your doorstep every day. At least, unless you're a national daily, you don't.

It's why you can't ever have a COMPLETELY off day. Because that's the day something big is going to pop. And you WILL be judged on how you handled it that day, whether you were on your game or not.

 

This thread started with someone saying 'They had stuff on the homepage, but damn it, I wanted it on their sports page because that's where I look. They suck.'
If you have an issue with their coverage on the homepage -- and thus far no one has -- then that's a problem.
But bitching because there isn't the same coverage on two pages at a paper that size when they no doubt were scrambling like crazy to, you know, report the news and provide perspective for the print product makes you the guy in upper deck in left field screaming "Where the hell was that pitch, you blind idiot!"
It's about priorities.
If they posted the breaking story, updated the story, added reaction, photos, sider(s), etc., that's plenty for online because there still was a hell of a lot to do for the paper.

 

It is about priorities. High on the list should be updating your sports page so the high-profile death that occurred in your town isn't buried (no pun intended) on the sports page hours later while the (now inappropriate) preview screams for your attention.

 

This is where I come in, too. The preview story (and basically what the preview story said) being kept in such a prominent place, or really being anywhere on the site after that crash/death, is the biggest problem for me.

We all know that readers will take any opportunity to not read our product, whether it's in paper form or online. The LVRJ gave its readers a reason not to depend on them with that screwup.

 

The difference between this and what Reno did with the airplane race crash is amazing. It was a far, far better job.

 

I think sports desks get so many irrational complaints from readers, that when we finally get a rational one (like this one), we already have an excuse and an eye roll ready.

This is inexcusable. Bet the Las Vegas Sun didn't blow it. And they're laying off people too.

 

Many newspapers don't seem to think too much about what their "inside" website pages look like, on the assumption that if it's not on the front (generally in the 'Top Stories' boxes), it's not going to get read. From the click-measuring figures I've seen this is not really a wrong assumption. Not that this makes ignoring updating them excusable, mind, but it's not a problem isolated to the Review-Journal. This is just a good example of why it's an actual problem.

 

First of all, they didn't update the story much. It was still relatively short. It appeared to have been updated shortly after the death was announced, then left alone for the rest of the night. That was the only story up. One breaking news story and no sidebars, no photo gallery, no columns and no other content up at midnight their time, at least six hours after his death was announced.

Second, did you look at the preview story? It's a story about, to quote, "Racing team owner Sam Schmidt will leave Las Vegas Motor Speedway a winner regardless of how any of his teams does (sic) today in the inaugural IndyCar World Championships."

Sam Schmidt was the owner of Dan Wheldon's car/team.

I stand behind my comments entirely.

This has not been my experience at the last three newspapers where I've worked. (All within the last six years -- hey, I just started at the most recent place; give me a break.) Two of those stops were at slightly smaller papers than the LVRJ. None ever had an event as big as the defending Indy 500 winner dying happen locally.

There was always someone -- at least one person, and at my current stop, several -- responsible for what the sports page looked like until at least midnight each day. Granted, some people took that job far more seriously than others, but there was always someone culpable.