Preps Under Attack

This is a really interesting thread. I'm actually on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. Preps will be the last beat standing. If done correctly, it can make a ton of money and really drive subscriptions, even in pro-heavy towns. And, from a journalism standpoint, I think some of the most vital work a newspaper does is covering the local high schools, considering how much it affects the readership. It's also the one thing you can't get from anywhere else, and the demand will always likely be there.

 

Exactly why everyone went into sports journalism to begin with!

 

What paper is doing it correctly?

 

The Victoria (TX) Advocate still does a great job from what I have seen.

 

The era of page views has not been kind to prep coverage. The real issue is unless you're in a market where one or two high schools dominate the coverage, the interest is way too fragmented. People care about high schools, but only their high school. The MMQB approach can help a little, but at the end of the day, I think many folks (myself included) overestimated how much people cared. The only time there is wide interest in a prep story (at least where I'm located) is when there's a really incredible human interest story or if there's a really high-level recruit involved.

So except in certain locations, I don't expect prep coverage to exist much longer.

 

According to Wikipedia it owned by the Robert's family. God bless them and may the Advocate serve as a model.

It is just that I fear that independent ownership of a stand-alone product is becoming harder to maintain. For example, the Eugene paper just sold after 91 years of family ownership.

 

The Eugene sale sucks. That has been a great local paper, with tremendous sports coverage.

 

Guessing you're in Texas. I was going to ask if there are any areas where prep coverage is as good or better than it was 10-15 years ago.

 

Prep sports has the same problem as intensive local news coverage — to do it well requires time and resource$ that most daily papers don't (or won't) have available.

At best, prep coverage even at smaller daily papers will be reduced to shared social media or emailed box scores. Earlier deadlines and papers laid out at remote locations will eliminate covering games, and the lack of reporters at games cuts down on good feature story ideas.

It's a shame, because high school sports still matter in small towns and isolated media markets. Even sports like swimming, wrestling and track have tons of great stories to tell if you take the time to watch and talk with the athletes and coaches.

 

My old rag thinks it can be a regional paper for preps. They've cut down on the coverage of the local teams, pretty much forgotten about one league altogether. State playoffs in anything other than football/basketball/wrestling get spotty coverage. And they've pretty much done away with phoners, putting the onus on the schools to provide the information.

But ... they've added two-person sports staffs in Philly and Pittsburgh, with one of those two almost exclusively on preps. The result is that you have a much better chance of seeing a feature on some suburban Pittsburgh kid than you do a student-athlete from the immediate area. It's absolutely strange. And do I think they're making inroads in Philly and Pittsburgh? No, I don't.

 

You better believe it. The coverage around the state has dropped in recent years with all of the job movement, but it's still pretty good and remains a place to do really quality journalism, which you don't necessarily do all the time at the college and pro levels.