Local Content vs. National Content

We tried to go the hold-to-the-front route. More than once. Always ends up that we would do it for a couple of weeks, then jump one, then two ... Never failed. I don't have a problem with jumps. Just don't want a 25-inch jump with no art. I ain't reading it unless you really pull me in.

We pretty much always have 4 on the cover. 3 if it's a big event, like today's section for the US game. But we have done 5 and even 6. It's pushing it to get 5, but our SE doesn't always see it that way.

 

I'm a rail guy, betraying my years at USA Today. It's the Swiss Army knife of newspaper design.

 

One place I worked, our entire staff loved the 30-inch gamer. Several weeks into my first football season on the copy desk, I went to our SE in private and explained that the stories were too long, hard to read and even harder to package. But they had been writing that way forever and apparently truly thought the public loved its school sports that much. Not real fun.

 

I've found that when the concentration moves to online, many writers take it as license to write however much they want to. Then it's left to the print people to cut it back down to a manageable length.

 

When I said 30-inch I was referring to a game story....Good stories need to be told. Tell the story.

 

Typical to what you're hearing already...we try to anchor our section front with a local story of some sort and use regional (not national) stories to fill in the gaps. More regional stories during the slower summer weeks, although we usually find enough stuff to keep us pretty local through most of June/July...seems there's a week or two in mid-August that is usually pretty brutal.

Once the prep season gets under way we are heavily local, but still try to fit a regional story or two tucked away on the inside somewhere. I'd actually like a little more space during those stretches to keep our regional coverage more consistent.

 

I really like the column in the rail as a reader, but damn if I can remember the last time we did it. We went from holding all stories to the cover (idiotic to run an 8-inch gamer), then progressed to just holding the column, but now we've gone completely away from that and are back to jumping everything. Which is good from a design perspective, but I really like reading the metro columns in our local papers that hold to the rail. So much easier to get through without searching for the jump.

 

Wait. It's idiotic to run a 30-inch gamer, but it's idiotic to run an 8-inch gamer? Where does the range run? From 12.9 to 13.2 inches?

Yes, I know you've allowed more range than that. But. I think there's considerably more leeway than you're allowing.

 

Don't be a fool. Yes, it's idiotic to hold a gamer to the front. I would say 12-18 inches as a rule of thumb. Too short is just as bad as too long.

 

(sorry. I edited.) but I still think a 12-18 rule of thumb is too rigid.

 

I am not saying there no exceptions, in fact I have allowed for some previously. But to write an 8-inch or 30-inch gamer on a daily basis is just a waste of the writer's time and a waste of the reader's time, respectively. Our games are in the 18-20 range, and that seems about right to me. For a run-of-the-mill reg season game we might shorten a little and run more notes. I am actually quite flexible with writers, but there has to be some parameters.

 

I've heard the 8-inch or 12-inch gamer being a waste of the writer's time before.

It may sound dismissive of writers, and I don't want it to be. But the writer's time is at the discretion of the people making decisions for a section. I don't want a writer saying, "It wasn't worth my time to go there for 8 inches." No, if it was a necessary part of the day's presentation, then it was worth your time.

And an 8-inch story can be a story that needed to be in the section.