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NBA coverage in podunk

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Mooninite, Jan 16, 2007.

  1. MC Sports Guy

    MC Sports Guy Member

    Running all NBA box scores is far from "retarded." Fans of the NBA do care about what's going on elsewhere, and maybe others just like to see how much Kobe scored last night or something like that. Not everyone will read it, but there isn't one thing in the paper that everyone likes. Our job is to try and serve as many as possible.
     
  2. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    35K here, about two hours door-to-door from an NBA arena if the lights will cooperate.

    We have folks in our market who are fans of the team and a certain small slice of season ticket holders, even.

    We try to use the AP story (and box) from that team every night. Otherwise, we do a decent preview at the start of the season, keep an eye out for features of interest, always try to cover the big news (Kobe's 81), and avoid the daily roundup thing until the playoffs start. Once a week, we do an update on the league at the bottom of the scoreboard page, featuring three regional teams of interest and a "wild card" team.

    Once in a blue moon, when a player with state/area ties comes through, we might ease over the arena for some face time. We could do more, but it would help if the team would cooperate by not sucking so badly.

    I wrote a story at the start of the month about the team's home schedule, which had a bunch of interesting games on it in terms of the players who would be in town (Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Nowitzki, etc.)

    I can imagine there will be quite a bit of interest in the NBA Draft. The team's hometown paper has already started writing features about the top draft prospects.
     
  3. RFB-Boy

    RFB-Boy Member

    We're roughly eight hours away from an NBA team (Unless the Jazz count, then three) and we run a daily rup, often led off by the Jazz when deadline permits. Deadline permits about half of the time, since ours is the earliest of any AM I've ever heard of.

    Personally, I think it's a little silly to run a full rup when we've already got the glance and boxes in the agate, but it's not my decision, so I roll with the status quo. Personally, unless Arenas goes off for 51 again, I could care less how the Wizards won. I'm willing to be that sentiment would be echoed often around our area. Just guessing here.
     
  4. Sconnie

    Sconnie Member

    We're at least four from one NBA team and 7 from another. We run small glance and 1 or 2 sentence roundups on each game each night. No boxes, not even for local teams. We'll run an AP feature on the one of the teams every week or so.

    Same goes with the NHL, also about 4 hours away. Rdps each day, only a sentence or two on each game that night, and a glance in the scoreboard.
     
  5. WSKY

    WSKY Member

    Let me rephrase that. No one reads NBA boxes in our non-NBA city. Well, maybe they do ... but I gotta think there's room for something else in our six-page (eight on weekend) section. I think there's room for some of the regional ones, but all of them? I think in baseball (and NFL too) box scores are much more important because of the fantasy aspect, but in NBA, or NHL, I personally could care less. I want to know who won, who led each team and that's about it.
     
  6. Crimson Tide

    Crimson Tide Member

    We don't go with "they're already online in the AP sports feed" because the toothless rubes in our area still consider dial-up to be futuristic technology.
     
  7. Mooninite

    Mooninite Member

    I guess we're not so far out of line with everyone else. We bump it up when the playoffs start of course.

    Bob...I'm from Flag City USA...or right now Flood City USA.
     
  8. Jesus Christ, no one cares about the NBA. You'd be better off running horse racing agate.
     
  9. RFB-Boy

    RFB-Boy Member

    Oh, horse racing agate! You know, I actually had one old man call me to complain about our lack of coverage of the Preakness. Because horse racing is so huge in Idaho, I know. Anyway, this guy argued with me that more people in the world are interested in horse racing than soccer on the basis that not only breeders have horses, but so do hayseeds across the world who use them for farming. Then I reminded him that there are places called Europe and South America.

    Long story short: I learned that day that if you have time to drag an angry call out for 45 minutes, rube on the other end will get tired and give up.
     
  10. Bob Slydell

    Bob Slydell Active Member

    Is that Findlay? I used to work in Sandusky.
     
  11. At my old shop, a 25,000-circ place, we ran boxes and standings. Only ran breakout stories if it was big news...even most of the NBA-significant stories like coaching changes and injuries to star players made the page 2 briefs...
     
  12. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    People in Idaho are wagering on the Preakness. You should have a sufficient amount of coverage on the Triple Crown races and the Breeder's Cup. The man was right in complaining.
     
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