Mlive: Letting parents cost their kids scholarships

There are a lot of generalizations about audience size. Anyone want to share their page views for high school content vs. other stuff?

 

Really, I think that local sports coverage should move more in the direction of treating it like an arm of the education beat, and de-emphasize on-the-field exploits and results. Even in the case of towns where people come out to the games, probably limited to football and basketball, I'm not sure how much blood-and-guts coverage is necessary in 2015. These are teen-agers playing a game. I spent a considerable percentage of my adult life covering prep sports. I enjoy prep sports. I played prep sports. I just don't know if it's news worthy of limited resources in modern times.

 

The advantage high schools have is that people feel a connection. So if you went to Podunk High 20 years ago, you might be interested in coverage of Podunk High. Or know kids or relatives going to Podunk High.

Built in audience -- though they may check in and out.

If you have a 5K that draws 3,000 runners, you can and should cover it, but how many of those runners are competitive? Very few so people aren't really looking for the same type of coverage of that event.

However, if you have a cyclist, triathlete, etc. with some interesting story or achievement, you write the story.

 

So I'm hearing some good enterprise on Harbaugh's hats? The suits will love it.

 

Who reads high school sports coverage? High school kids.

If you are trying to build a local-orientated, general interest newspaper, high school sports isn't just something you do, it is something you must do.

If you want to get young people in the habit of reading the paper, you have to provide them something to read.

Now, if the argument is in this era of declining resources you throw the baby out but keep the bathwater for the adults, that's something entirely different.

If that's the case, you don't have much of a compelling reason to keep the vast majority of sports coverage but, then, not all of us want to read law journals or trade publications. That's also a more diffcult ad sell.

 

Three pro markets and big state U are 100 or more miles away from us here in the rural Midwest. People still attend basketball and football games and the small towns that surround us still identify with their local schools, its the center of activity in many villages. We're perhaps the prep sports leader in our region, we'll keep doing it too because our advertising department can sell it.

 

But every time you mention that you're a staff writer or a freelancer, those same people will tell you that they're a writer, too. Usually working on that great American novel.

 

Someone asked about page views. Here's just a sample from this past week with the state track meet (all classes).

• We had 10 stories from the three-day state meet (live updates, notebooks, recaps, features) that did 4,000, combined, across desktop and mobile.
• In 24 hours, my story on Colorado State offering COA for athletes did 5,000 desktop, 9,600 mobile.
• As of 9 a.m. this morning, my Monday column on two former CSU players with the Broncos is at 726 desktop, 794 mobile. Current trajectory, the column will do better than 50 percent of what state track did by noon.

HOWEVER!!!

State track photo gallery crushed it with 20,000 desktop, 10,000 mobile. Usually, mobile galleries for sports do better, but not this time. Still, 30,000 page views for the state track meet is great.

Plus, we went all-out with prep track in print this weekend. Like I said, we don't do a lot of gamers during the regular season, then go all out for state and what we get are thank-you calls rather than complaints. Even though that taking some time off from CSU coverage, it was worth it. Three days of state track covers and a couple of inside pages are below. And yes, that is a horizontal broadsheet cover. I was skeptical, but I think it worked out well.

 

Your shop did a nice job covering the state track meet, Matt. Even the agate page looks sharp, with enrollment classes set off and event labels bolded.

There's good stories and photos to be found at big track meets, and it looks like you had decent weather, too. Always a bonus.

 

Yes. Nice job, Matt. Everything looks solid in this section.

 

Thanks, all. There were sacrifices we had to make, though. We had two reporters and two photographers down at the final day of the state track meet in Denver on Saturday. Meanwhile, a local high school unexpectedly won the 5A boys swimming title down in Colorado Springs. We had a reporter there, but no photographer (only art we got was team photo with medals). That ran inside on Page 2. With Fort Collins High (the focus in the horizontal cover) finishing in second place, Fossil Ridge (the swimming school) folks were upset to not be on the cover. And I get that, especially when down the rail on the cover we run a story about at 1A track title. But we had four people down at state track. We couldn't devote those resources and not blow the cover out big with track. Can't make everyone happy.

 

That's actually an interesting way to approach it. However, it's easy to do that in a city like Fort Collins, with both a Division I program and the high likelihood a number of teams/athletes will be at state tournaments.

Those of us at smaller dailies don't have quite the same ability, because a number of kids/teams are unlikely to make it to state and there's not a Division I program to fill the pages with local content.