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Outdoors coverage

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Mark DeCotis, May 23, 2008.

  1. 2muchcoffeeman

    2muchcoffeeman Well-Known Member

    Local paper has been pretty much all hooks, no bullets/arrow for a long time now. They've recently reinvented the page as an almost-all-saltwater sports page — fishing, surfing, and so on — with some freshwater fishing thrown in. May change some as fall go-out-in-the-woods-and-drink-beer season .... er, hunting season comes closer.
     
  2. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    We have an outdoors page Thursdays-Sundays that's the back page of the section to put it in color position. The layout is done by the SE (so the ASE/slot guy doesn't have to add that to his plate) and most of the writing is done by a news reporter in what can be called a happy circumstance. When we lost our last outdoor writer, this newsroom worker (she was primarily clerical with her duties) volunteered to do some outdoor writing and proved to be very good with it, so it stuck.

    We're in Louisiana, so hunting and fishing is so big, we tend to keep the Outdoors page to those things. We have a Sunday recreation page that absorbs sports like hiking/biking/multi-sport racing/boat racing, etc., though we do not have a writer for that page like we do outdoors, so it's catch as catch can for those sports. Also, news has a health/fitness section and it's not unusual for me (I have to handle the rec page) to look at it and say "hey, that should have been on the rec page." BUT the rec page is an inside page and if we have a locally-written story on, say, a mountain biker, then it's likely to get on the health/fitness page because that's a section front and the rec page is not.
     
  3. bpallack

    bpallack New Member

    Our outdoors reporter belongs to the Features section and mainly does a "hike of the week" type feature, plus we have a ton of hikes online. Other recreation doesn't get much coverage.

    What about creating a fishing/hunting portal online where people can upload their pictures, but not have them printed in the paper? Bird-watching is a big deal here and our readers upload bird photos to our gallery all the time.
     
  4. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    I've been under the impression that "blood sports" are on borrowed time as newspapers continue to gear coverage to older female readers, hence the dilution of business coverage and emphasis on sports stories about Junior (and I ain't talking Earnhardt) that can be clipped and sent off to Aunt Ruth in Dubuque.
    Anyone else seeing this?
     
  5. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    Down here, the picture of junior with the deer carcass does get clipped and sent to Aunt Ruth... but this aunt Ruth's in Gun Barrel City or Cut-n-Shoot (actual Texas towns...).
     
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