New Republic blogger hates the Wash. Post sports section

No, the Post simply has brutal sports deadlines. I don't know why they're inflexible (that's a question for Emilio) but I know from speaking with friends that, even on day football games, they are required to file a first version right as the game ends. I'm not sure how much the writers are allowed to go back into the stories (certainly some) but it's a pretty big time crunch, worse than at most papers. I imagine it has something to do with the fact that their coverage area stretches from the middle of Virginia to the middle of Maryland.

 

Don't know about the Post, but I know that a lot of major large-city newspapers have very early deadlines to get the paper to the outlying areas of their coverage area. Trucks might have to travel 3-4+ hours to get those papers there, meaning early deadlines for all. Saturday is even worse because of the size of the paper. One company I know has a copy deadline that's an hour earlier on Saturday, so college football really gets screwed.

By the way, I'm not a fan of this policy at all, but I have many colleagues working at larger papers who have to file so much earlier than other reporters on their beat for this very reason.

 

They file right away to get the story on the web and because of early editions. The guys at the AJC have Saturday deadlines starting at 6:30 p.m., I believe.