More deadline issues

Don't do website gamers. Just run the scores.

But otherwise, yeah, I agree. Decisions have consequences. And then, as lone star said, when the paper starts losing even more money, the higher-ups who thought of this genius plan will panic even more.

 

Most of our games start at 7. Our main problem has been that our football is really top-heavy in talent, which has led to a lot of high-scoring (and long) games.

It's a credit to my writers, though, that the latest I have gotten copy from them this season is 9:40.

 

If the writers are able to file remotely and they write running, you might be able to make this work, but that's me trying to look at this optimistically. What you'll have are a bunch of hastily-written play-by-play stories.

My solution to this would be to shift your approach so that you're coming out of every game you cover with a second-day story instead of a gamer. And of course you'll have to do some previews and features to fill in the off days.

Use a refer in the paper to get people to the web for scores. And I could see doing a roundup on the web that you publish on game nights, rather than full stories on each game. Maybe pick the best game of the night and have someone bang out 300 words on it to lead the roundup, and then a paragraph each on the rest of the night's games. And then on the web, refer back to the next day's paper with something like, "For more on how East Podunk's defense is setting the tone for the team this season, see Friday's East Podunk Press."

In general, this sucks. But these early deadlines seem to be developing into the solution du jour for saving money when management gets desperate. But the positive (and ironic) thing that may come out of this is that if we all alter our approach in the face of this, the level of writing and the types of stories that end up in the paper should improve. If we all start thinking in terms of features and second-day stories, we'll eliminate the boring gamer once and for all.

And then we'll all have plenty of fodder for the Dear Dimwit on the Phone thread, what with all the parents complaining that Little Johnny had 39 yards rushing and it didn't get in the paper.

 

I'm pretty glad I got out of covering HS football before the spread offense became as popular as it is. Always appreciated a game between two teams with run-heavy offenses.

 

A terrible idea...why work twice as hard, then send your readers to read everything free on the web. Don't even bring this up...because chances are the higher-ups will think its great. But last I checked, webhits don't translate to my paycheck.