Local v. National

When I'm on pages, I try and choose national/international stuff that is feature-ish. Most people already who won, how and where it happened, etc. We have three all-sports networks up here in Canada. And of course there is the web. Plus, we all have our agate pages.

So I get something more in depth, but still makes mentions of the major players and plays. But I try to avoid straight gamers off the wire - unless that's all there is available. I don't fill space to fill space.

I also try and run a local story on every page, rather than go with an all-local front. If we have a local baseball story, it's on the baseball page, hockey on the hockey page, etc.

 

I love that line.

 

We go roughly 75 percent local, more on some days. So if we went more national, it would have a negative effect on us.

 

I agree.

You have to have it in there. Somewhere. If you're a decent sports section, no matter your size or market, you have to include sports that people pay attention to, which is pro and/or major college, in addition to preps/local/niche sports with a niche audience.

And then you cater your balance to your priority level, which depends on your audience, your market, the season, and a host of other factors specific to your paper.

But there's no balance if you have a dozen of one and none of the other.

 

Amen! Why make people go other places to get their news? Sure, if you're an East Coast paper chances are very few of your circulation give two shits about the Cardinals-Brewers game, but does a 3-inch blurb inside somewhere about the game really take up that much room and keep something local out of the paper? Of course it doesn't.

Back at the beginning of the year our managing editor, who shortly after became our editor, actually said NOBODY gives a shitass about national sports. I mean other than the millions of people that watch the Super Bowl, the 250k that are at Daytona for a whole week or the 108K that crowd into Beaver Stadium to watch Penn State nobody gives a shitass.

If you work at a small-town paper local should be your bread and butter, but you can't ignore national sports. Doing that makes you as dumb as someone who says nobody gives a shitass about national sports.

 

Nobody running a daily sports section of any size is suggesting that national sports be ignored. Of course, that would be foolish. The daily is a great place to collect boxscores for readers. But your 3 inches on the Cardinals-Brewers also means 3 inches on every other game, too. That's a ton of space -- especially if the NBA or NHL is happening at the same time. I see plenty of papers that have almost nothing but roundups, and they're boring as hell.

Moreover, with more and more readers perusing their sports section AFTER they get home from work, they're getting their 3 inches -- especially on the West Coast -- after their team's game has already started that night. By then, I'm fairly certain they already know what that 3 inches will say, thanks to SportsCenter or even their 6 o'clock news. Not exactly fresh. And finally, I have my teams that I follow, and I go to the newspaper web sites in those towns for information on them.

Point is, we're not recruiting any new readers with Scoreboard pages, national gamers and roundups. But we're sure losing them.

And just because millions watch a sporting event on TV doesn't mean my (or your) small town is dying to read about it the next day in the Daily Planet.

JV volleyball? No. Ignore national sports? Not a chance. But I haven't seen a compelling argument yet against focusing heavily on local, especially for sports sections under 40,000. Our circulation rose 10 percent last year. I guess if we were still running national sports roundups it would've been more.

 

If your 3 inches on the Cardinals-Brewers is in 11-point, that IS a waste of space. More like 1" of 9-point. There are many, many ways to skin a cat.

 

The point I'm making is you can't say, 'Oh we don't have to run that because they'll go to ESPN.com for that.' Why make your readers go somewhere else to get something they can get from you? The next thing you know you're saying that about everything that isn't local.

What I do for baseball roundups (or any other roundup) is run as much as possible on teams of local interest and then one paragraph about the other games. Do some games get cut completely? Yes, but we try to get a box in on those. Sometimes with limited space (district playoffs, big feature package, ect.) you can't and that's just how it goes. But if we have the space we try to get in as much as possible even if it's just briefs or what have you.

I'm with you Trucha that local should be the focus of smaller, hometown papers. That's where I'm at and for the most part we have all local fronts (unless something important nationally is going on and even then sometimes that goes inside). My argument is to give your readers something on as much as possible. Don't make them go to four different web sites and two other papers to get everything they want when you can give it to them. If they want to go somewhere else for more in-depth coverage that's their choice.

 

Agreed. Read above post.

 

Yet, it's amazing how some editors think that two calls about some stupid little hyperlocal thing means we should jump all over it, throw the Super Bowl on Page 8 and make sure it's blanket coverage. I worked for a couple of editors like that ... and it's scary that people who can't see the forest for a tree or two are empowered to make such decisions.

It's about balance. Can't ignore the local, but can't let your fronts be overrun with JV wrestling when there's stuff that the readers who didn't grow up in the local area and couldn't care less about high school sports would rather see.

 

Over-reacting to complaints is the worst thing a sports editor can do. Unless you have a 20-page section with no ad support, and a staff of about 15-20, you can not please them all.

 

That sounds like you're unfairly denigrating the weekly newspaper. If you don't think there's quality reporting going on at a community weekly, you're mistaken.