PM vs. AM

I string for a paper that is P.M. 5 days a week and a Saturday A. M., but no Sunday. That schedule fits my schedule since I work another job, too. Been doing it for 16 years. It works for me.

 

For those at PM papers ...

How many of you do the section at night?
How many do the section in the AM?

Is there a right or wrong way to do it?

 

Our current deadline we tried is 10 a.m. for color and 10:30 for BW pages. March 3 it will be 11:45-noon for color and 12:15-12:30 for BW. I do all of my pages in AM. Don't like doing it at night. I like getting the optional stories and west coast scores in the paper and I want the latest up-to-date news. I guess doing it at night would work, but it would defeat the purpose IMO for an afternoon daily. We are PM M-F and AM on sat. Rest of the weekend is pretty much freed up. I am able to balance family and work life pretty well with that kind of schedule.

 

I'm at a PM and our deadline is 10:30 a.m. although we're usually done well before that unless we have to wait for something breaking nationally.

I'm not fond of it, especially since I'm not a morning person and that's when we put the section together.

It's good personally in the sense that I can plan meals with my wife around my schedule and eat at home 95 percent of the time, but on the other hand sometimes getting to work at 7 a.m. when I've been covering a basketball game with overtime and 35 combined fouls that had me writing until midnight isn't fun.

It works well for the newside, but the sports side works at night so I don't think it does us a lot of good.

The editors love it. They're home by 4.

 

I love working at a p.m. We switch to the a.m. cycle for the weekend, so football Fridays are hectic. But the rest of the time you can take your time writing after a game, grab something to eat before sitting down, chat up coaches and players a little more than if you were scrambling to make deadline, etc. Mornings can be a bitch (as can basketball season), but getting home for dinner 80 percent of the time makes up for it.

 

When I used to run a PM sports section, I basically did it as an AM without a final deadline.
I would come in at 7 p.m. and work until the final west coast games ended.
God, I used to hate those Extra Inning Advisories on west coast baseball games.
There were some nights I wouldn't get out til 4 a.m. ET.
With a press time of 9:30 a.m., it wouldn't make sense to come in early plus you need someone to supervise things with HS calls coming in at night.
You get lucky that it's rare when something big happens between 2-3 a.m. and 9.
When we had the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, we would come in early and get the latest coverage in, which was great in beating out metro AM competition.

 

Personally I loved when I worked for and received a PM paper.

I liked coming home from school or work and having it on my door to go through while I flipped on the evening news.

 

The p.m. paper in my area is revered by the readers because it "cleans up" on local coverage. Well, no shit - it covers 10 towns, as opposed to our 40.

But that's what a p.m. paper should do well - with more time to observe/react/question/think/write, a p.m. paper needs to be able to go more in-depth and do a better job than any competing a.m. does.

 

Absolutely.

That's why on a combination of what has been said regarding people wanting news instantly, I believe the PM paper should make a comback nationwide.
People are gonna wakeup and get done in the morning with their TV blaring the news and checking the internet at work. I don't understand why more people wouldn't want to come home to an indepth news source, that goes much deeper than the breaking news on TV or the web. That's what I prefer - more enterprise writing to chew on.