Preps Under Attack

Just curious what those who spend a lot of time on the preps think of the future of the beat. Looking at local coverage out this way, the cutbacks are quite evident in the coverage.

Extensive use of stringers for title games in basketball tournaments (if playoff games are covered at all), and this is from major papers.

I know Spring is the cruelest time of the year, between tournaments and the weather uncertainty, but the pullback is glaring. Are there complaints?

 

Well obviously preps will be cut first in the major papers. That's not why people subscribe to the major papers.

But the future of preps is just fine at small/midsized dailies that don't have a pro or D1 team in the coverage area.

 

I kind of think for those papers with a wide area and more than 25-30 schools in your area (boys and girls) you would almost have to cover the beat not so much with gamers, but with a Peter King MMQB thing, where you check the box scores and talk with coaches and players over the phone for a decent weekly wrap-up.

 

Our local paper, a 25,000 daily that was 40,000 about 10 years ago, has 125 or so high schools in its coverage area.

The area includes a D-I university, a minor-league baseball team, a successful D-II university, a couple of NAIA schools, a couple of pro golf tournaments and a ton of outdoor activities. They've gone from 5 full-time sports writers to 1 to "cover" all of that.

They've cut across the board, but preps have taken the biggest cut. During last fall, each week they did a midweek football feature, then covered and shot one FB game, and did a "5 things we learned" for Saturday's paper. Not a word all fall about any sport other than football, including as teams in its main coverage area won state titles in other sports. They had football teams close in to their coverage area (30 miles away) reach the state championship games in 2 classes, but not a word on football after the city teams were eliminated.

Even less coverage in basketball. They covered a couple of big tournaments in the city, but nothing regular for coverage, features or gamers. They picked up a couple of city teams when they reached the round of 16 and quarterfinals for basketball, but were very sporadic about coverage for non-city teams in the coverage area that made state tournament runs. Also, stopped running scores and box scores for all high school events - they laid off the minimum-wage clerks. Wrestling and swimming, which included city teams win individual and state championships? Literally not a word.

The reaction, from people I know who work there, started with outrage during the fall, then degraded to complete indifference by the end of basketball season. They see that as a victory that they no longer listen to complaint calls and e-mails every day. I countered that it's a bad sign, that people have left and don't even care/see enough to complain about anymore.

 

They don't care because the decision-makers aren't from the local area and don't give a damn about the local area, and make sure the local "handlers" see that point. I haven't read a paper in a year that doesn't suck nowadays in terms of what they are in preps and what they were. I am completely befuddled how "handlers" with any fucking common sense think that is the way to a profit. An old saying "They won't care unless they see that you care" comes to mind here.

 

"But readers of the redesigned Podunk Press will still enjoy the same great coverage we've provided for decades."

 

My saying has always been, "The minute you think you are irrelevant, you become irrelevant."
Preps are a niche that not every market needs to devote a lot of resources to (like in cities with major pro sports teams). But in mid- and small-size cities, particularly in certain regions, it's a mistake to ignore them. Some of those papers are looked at as the paper of record for the state, and one 400-word article there carries more weight than 50 stories in their hometown paper. There's money to be made there with seemingly a minimal amount of effort and expense.
It also makes me chuckle that some of these papers are trying to put on a statewide high school sports awards banquet as a moneymaker while cutting their preps staff down to one or no people.

 

The two papers I read pretty regularly for preps are the Star Ledger and The (Bergen) Record, sometimes the Morris Cty Record and if someone I work with has the Trentonian I'll read it. IMHO, the preps coverage at the Ledger has plummeted. It used to be pretty extensive. Of course there are way less people working there. They tried to cover the entire state of NJ, which is pretty impossible, but up until the mid 00s I'd say they did a very good job of covering most of North and Central NJ. IMHO, the coverage at The Record may have slipped a little, but it's still very good. Guess they have just enough people and the area they cover is basically a couple counties. They are very populated counties, but the area is not that large.

 

My humble opinion is that prep writers will fade away into oblivion. Wire copy is easier for a central hub to lay out. It is also cheaper to buy wire copy about the nearest major league team rather than pay a staff reporter to go to a high school game.

 

The industry is moving to design hubs and hence earlier deadlines. Is it even possible to get a game story of the local high school into the next day's paper at a chain like Gatehouse?

 

Which is why I suggested doing a MMQB thing on a Monday or Tuesday, a decent wrap-up of the weekend - of course I don't know how anyone verifies stats anymore.

 

I understand that. But if you move to wrap-ups it becomes a lot easier for a cluster of newspapers to have one guy sitting in a central location writing the story and the guys out in the field get axed. In many states one of two companies control most of the papers. Just as an example, Lee, which has most of the big papers in Montana, could have one or two reporters for the state and generate a statewide wrap up. It appears BH, which controls most of Virginia, is heading that way. Danville is a pretty good sized town and I don't think it has a full-time prep reporter now.