Local Content vs. National Content

I find those sort of stories more interesting to read than the typical feature on Joe Stud running back. You see what different schools are doing and sometimes one school will take someone else's idea and copy it. It can become a talking point not just at one school but all over the region, including colleges.

 

If your own staffers are writing it, I consider it counting as local.

One place I worked was about 100 miles (different directions) between two state universities. But, man, I worked my butt off covering those schools: features on local athletes playing there, a weekly column, previews, enterprise, etc. AP didn't do much on them, so readers seemed to appreciate having original content on the schools several days per week.

 

At first glance, I would agree. But you know, I've seen some of our local outlets doing mid-summer stories on rising players at 7x7 camps and the such. I find that much more interesting. Gives me an idea of who to keep an eye on come September.

 

It depends. But I worked at a paper with about a 40K circulation, and we did front-page stories (not gamers) on minor-league baseball and such, and that seemed about right. But we'd also get the British Open or the Triple Crown races out there too. It's pretty easy to find a good balance. And if it's a REALLY small town where almost everyone knows each other, then you could consider doing Little League stuff, but other than that, I'd keep the LL coverage to scores and occasional grip-and-grins. Every market is different, but I agree that the majority of folks who read the sports section care more about national sports.

 

To expand the OP's question a bit: What about columnists?

Our small daily has three FT sports writers, including the editor, and between them they have 5 columns a week (we use AP columns the other two days).

They've been pushing to make almost all of their columns on local people/topics, and I think it's strengthened the section.

No offense, but I really don't care what a sportswriter at a 20K daily thinks about where LeBron James should play next season.

 

No SE at a 20k should be writing columns on Lebron unless you are a 20k daily in Florida and you cover the Heat from time to time.
A good thing for a small daily to do with columns is to rotate topics; have a weekly racing column, a weekly hunting and fishing column, a weekly catching up with the former area prep stars who are playing in college column. If you have a D-I you can have a column on that. During football season a prep football notebook would be workable.

 

There's good localized national stories and there's bad ones. Your example is of a good one. Having umpteen stories of how a bunch of local fans think the regional NFL team is going to win the Super Bowl because they won a wild-card game is a pain, predictable and boring reading.

 

No one cares what Newspaper Guy From Bumfuck thinks about LeBron? What do you think blogs are?

 

Anyone here have experience with AP Member Choice Limited?

 

Helps to think photos too, folks. A few weeks ago, one of the high school tennis coaches sent in an anouncement for her tennis camp. Wrote back and asked if we could send a shooter one day, and, 3-4 photos later, there's 3/4ths of a page of local content. Can do the same with all the camps going on ...

 

True. I wonder from experience at a past job if writing the columns is taking away from other stories that would be a better read. That's what I didn't like about HAVING to have a column every day. I did like my once-per-week column on our college conference. Enough variety during the season that I could almost always find interesting stuff, but didn't have the pressure of having to write one three times a week and it left me free to do features and enterprise.

 

Good heavens, we have waaaaay too many camps to do that.

Ran an announcement in mid-April stating we would run a listing (free of charge) of all youth sports camps in the area as long as information was submitted by the deadline (gave them about a month to get the stuff to us). We had nearly 100 different camps and we weren't that large of city (around 50k population), camps in all sports (yes, even badminton and gymnastics) and all age levels. Worked so well it became an annual staple.