Local Content vs. National Content

Photo packages are a staple of our summer sections. We run more of them between Memorial Day and Labor Day than any other time of year. I'm OK with doing one or two a week.
Our city's rec department has a youth tennis program that plays every weekday. There's a semi-pro basketball league that plays on weekends. The high schools all do some sort of sports camps as fundraisers. There's golf and swimming lessons. None are necessarily worth a story. But, like you said, you send a photographer out there and run a nice photo package and it eats up the same amount of space and everyone's happy to see the photos.
Space those out a bit, and you get a day to breathe. Eight summer sections down, 60 to go.

 

Photo packages are great when that youth softball tournament with 75 teams comes to town.

 

Thanks for the effort folks! A lot of great points made

 

All depends the range of regional content and what I'll call specialty content.

Regional would be the local NBA/MLB/NFL teams. I tend to play that up by interest level. I'd call something like NASCAR specialty, since that can play big any day in some places. Just get a sense and let that guide you. If you have a lot of local, some less important regional stuff gets pushed inside. On a light day, more regional and maybe some high interest national, usually with something big (Last round of a golf major, Final Four, etc.) pushing out front regardless.

I recall one selection Sunday, my paper ran a D-2 women's basketball preview as a massive CP (it was a big game, relatively, but with weak art). That seemed kind of silly to me.

 

Again, it depends on the market and other factors. One place I worked we played up the local NAIA team more than some papers play up their local NCAA D-I team. We weren't a metro, but we weren't tiny, either.

Lot of reasons. College had a winning tradition in football and was financially invested with the paper. So there was subtle pressure to play up their sports --- even the non-revenue sports --- and never, ever say or write anything negative about them, their athletes or program.

 

If you have a local college, that's local. Don't really see how an NFL game with the city 200 miles away would ever be considered local. When I think local it's content they won't get anywhere else. If you run a 30-inch story with 2 photos from a Sunday 1 p.m. NFL game as your main Monday package you're wasting space. You don;t think the readers who care about that don't already know everything about the game?

 

If you run a 30-inch story on ANYTHING, other than an occasional feature, you are wasting space. And it depends what you have to put in its place.

 

Hmmmm ... that's a little too all-encompassing for my tastes. I still think a good read should be an integral part of a daily section.

A 30-inch gamer? Sure. That's ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is how many newspapers still insist on it.

 

Well, if you have the talented writing staff and the subjects to put out good 30-inch features every day, then go for it. Not likely. And 30 inches of anything else is too much. Sure, there can be exceptions, but a gamer/notebook/sidebar/column should not be that long. Well, a good feature-type column could be. Art is a good thing. So write less and use more/larger photos.

 

Ten years ago, a 30-inch story raised eyebrows. That was a mark you shot for when you were working on a solid feature. I think it equated to well over 1,000 words.
Nowadays, that's not the case.
With the width of our paper and our current fonts, I think 30 inches is about 800 words these days. Maybe a tad on the long side for a gamer, but definitely not as hard a mark to attain as it used to be.

 

I would absolutely NEVER allow anything more than 20 inches on a game story. And probably not more than 15 or so most times. Well, maybe not never. But only if it was a no-hitter or something crazy. Why would you write a 30-inch gamer. Give the key plays, run a few quotes and get out. If you have that much, so a sidebar or a notebook. Nobody wants huge masses of type in their paper, unless it's a great damn story. It's been reported in many studies that people prefer not to read jumps. And a 30-inch story produces a hell of a jump.

 

Maybe this is a sub-thread, but we've talked a bit here in the context of how many stories run on fronts.

We typically have three-story front, with a top-to-bottom rail.

Would be great if only one of those stories jumped, but more often it's two.

This is a great change from 10 years ago, when it might be a four-story front and most likely all four jumped.