Peace be with you if you cover baseball for the AP

I have to imagine the stringers would take on a large responsibility for this. Isn't the basically what MLB.com does, a staff writer for the home team and an intern for the road team?

 

This also might reduce the writers' tweeting time (see story about NBA referee suing AP writer).

 

The difference is instead of just getting the cover-your-ass, token, "We battled but we came up a little short" from whomever is managing the Pirates these days, the AP guy is now expected to write a separate lead geared toward the last place team on the ass end of a 10-1 loss. In late August.

 

Personally I'm all for this. Maybe AP will be using more unemployed, experienced baseball writers (cough cough) instead of the run-of-the-mill stringers.

 

I don't know if this was an Ivory Tower idea as much as it was a demand from the client base. Think of how many papers are no longer covering road games; for e money they are paying AP they can reasonably expect a game story relevant to their readers.

 

Interns cover the road team maybe 20-30 percent of the time.

 

Let me get this straight---AP posts its usual Red Sox-Orioles gamer at, say, 10:15 for everyone, to include Baltimore Sun. But Baltimore Sun needs story angled its way and its deadline is 10:30.

So, AP writer at game is supposed to turn Sun version at, say, 10:25 so desk can read it and send it along by 10:30.

Sounds to me like a decent desk editor could take 10:15 version and have it done to his or her own liking by 10:25. 10 minutes is plenty of time to move a few graphs around and fix the transitions, and get it done YOUR way.

Oh, deadline pressure, you say? Uh, doesn't that go with the territory?

 

Very valid concern. But in a case where, say, the Cubs are visiting Cincinnati and the Cubs win, that AP writer ought to be able to work a better lead on a team he knows well.
This is a long overdue approach. The way some gamers read, sometimes it seems the writers forget two teams were there.

 

Wait until you see some of the lame crap this generates.

 

Isn't that what beat guys have been doing for years?

More and more papers, even major metros, are finding it to be a huge waste of money and manpower to travel with a team week in, week out during the season. So stories that may have been written by a staffer 10 years ago are now AP copy.

 

No. Not even close. A traveling beat guy will do the bulk of his work before the game even starts in most cases. He will produce stories that the AP guy in a road city won't even know exist (and that's just reality, not a knock at the AP guys). There's a huge difference between covering a team and covering a game. Papers aren't finding it a "huge waste of money and manpower" to travel with a team, they're finding it a big expense they can no longer handle.

 

Sounds awesome on paper, but very few writers are capable of doing this well on a consistent basis.