Preventing the death of a newspaper

I worked on a paper that lost a third of its circulation in about a year. It's hard to say whether the 9 p.m. off the floor for first edition did it because there was so much else fucked up besides that. But the truth is that even if you lose readers, it takes a while for advertisers to get hip to it, and the paper doesn't die until the ads vanish.

People do buy the paper for other things besides sports. Big-city papers blow off games for first edition all the time because of early deadlines -- it's frustrating to put out an incomplete product and I wonder why people buy it, but it's SOP.

 

Carl,

Everything you're saying just sounds like a bunch of details to me. I'm not really into details. I'm more of a big-picture guy.

I think that as long as you are doing everything in your power to put out a solid sports section, the readers will take note.

I'm sure you'll see some old-timers at games, and once they hear of your struggles, they tell you, "Young man, I'm impressed."

 

Wow, glad I'm not the only guy getting reamed by his paper.

Last fall, same deal:
11 p.m. press deadline, up 30 minutes from previous season
One edition
Two-three writers
Two idiot part-timers
One SE who designs and edits all copy
12-15 games
7-7:30 p.m. starts
No laptops

Our solution? We missed deadline every Friday. SE interviewed for another job about a month into the season. Management knows I can walk without anything lined up. We got 11:30 back.

I'm guessing you're in Podunk, too? Fuck it, just do what you want and if you have to leave -- voluntary or not -- big fucking deal. It's not the only place in the world to work.

 

We had a similar situation at one my former shops a few years ago. We had a top-ranked team in the state playoffs, last local team alive, playing a 7:30 kickoff. I think our deadlines were 10 at that time and had recently been moved earlier, so we had no shot. Just about everyone was disasspointed, some leaned more toward irate. That night, the press took a giant dump, so they had to start late. By luck, we got it in. It still should have never come down to that. Remember the great USC/Texas Rose Bowl national championship game? So do I, because my shift was over and me and the rest of the sports desk were sipping beers for most of the second half.

My advice? Plan, plan, plan. You have to have someone running the mothership at the office, keeping tabs on how games are progressing. It makes a HUGE difference if it's band night or senior night or homecoming, when schools tend to take 40 minutes with elaborate ceremonies, or individually introducing every senior member of the football team, cheerleading squad and marching band. Have something you can put in place early, a column or mini-feech, so you can get rid of color early. Maybe save the K plate to run a scoreboard on the front. Keep most of your heavy lifting for inside, preferably a B&W page so the folks in pre-press don't want to murder you every Friday night. Give yourself options ... wild art, multiple photos for one game, whatever it takes to fill the page and make it somewhat attractive. And have contingencies in place, i.e., if I only get two staffed games, then I can plug the bottom of the page with a wire feech and blow up the local art. Have a plan in place so if you only get one game, you can overcome it. Yeah, a half-page house ad or plug isn't a great thing, but it's better than having the wheels come completely off and having to scramble only to get done 15 minutes late.

It's not fun, it's not pretty. But it can be done.

And forward any complaints to people up the foodchain.

 

Coupla ideas....1. Get your fotog out and shoot one (or two if the venues are close) first quarters, have them hustle back and splash the fotos and plug the score into the cut line...It's kind of how the TV stations deal with their Fri night deadlines/coverage needs...2. Insure yourself something by covering a fri afternoon soccer/field hockey (key matchup if possible)...

 

I know this probably won't be a popular thing to write here, but I'm thinking the people who made the decision to push up the deadlines considered how this would affect how much news would get into the paper -- and concluded that high school football game coverage was something they could live without. (And, no, I'm not a newspaper executive.)

That shouldn't tell you something about them, it should tell you something about what they think about the relevance of what you're doing. If you think you should leave, that's fine. But if you want to stay, then you have to recreate the section in a way that meets the production parameters. To me, it means more hard, in-depth reporting and features. That's not a bad thing.

There is way too much high school game coverage in the papers I pick up here and there. My local paper, one that spnited is familiar with, offers reams of high school coverage. The only high school stories I read are the ones that appear on the sports cover or on Page 1, which the editors put there because they have widespread appeal (ex: new Little League pitch counts).

Even though a lot of us don't want to believe it, game stories have about as much widespread relevance as borough council meeting stories -- unless the topic affects a wider percentage of the population. I know I'm in the minority, but I don't want to read a 10-inch recap of a football game played between two schools I couldn't care less about. And I used to cover high schools.

What this is all about, again, is finding a way for the paper to be on a doorstep by a certain time. That, to the beancounters, is more important than having a page of high school football game stories. We might find that stupid because we like high school football so much (and I do, too), but I'd rather work for a paper with early deadlines than no paper at all.

OK, fire away.

 

Had to go through this situation a few years ago when our joint was printing off site. Publisher got us some extra help to take calls on Friday night. It was two college kids, but it worked for the most part. We only covered games that were in the county. Photogs shot early and sprinted back. Reporters stayed close by the office. News side helped with layouts, taking calls. We tried to get at least get a score of the 12 or so games our readers cared about. After two weeks, we had the plan down to a science and rarely missed anything (We had full box scores of every game on the area schedule after the third week). We also did this without laptops.

Didn't win any awards for gamers or layouts that year, but it was nice getting out of the office before 11 on a Friday night.

 

I think the big issue is you have to adapt to what's been handed you. It looks bad and smells bad, but handled properly, it doesn't have to BE bad. If that means having a art-heavy, text-light presence in the Saturday paper and hitting it harder with second-days for Sunday, so be it. If it means doing roundups for Saturday and actual stories for whatever Web presence you have, so be it. It's far from ideal, but let's be honest, who here has truly ideal? In a way, if you hit the new deadlines with a detailed plan, it actually removes a lot of pressure from you because you know you're not going to have to wait for a 20-inch gamer. You've got time to get X in, and if X isn't in at the appointed time, you fill and move on.

I used to worry about the community taking the paper seriously or not, but at some point I realized that I had no power to effect change, and once I realized that, it turned into a matter of doing the job the best I could within the paramaters set before me, even if I thought they were designed by a punch-drunk limbless retard elk. The newspaper won't die because of early deadlines. If enough people complain and perform actions to quantify their frustration (i.e. cancelling subscriptions and advertisements), they'll figure out another solution. If not, then it'll be part of the process for the forseeable future. But if this ends your paper's existence, then even backtracking won't save it because by this point it's already too far gone.

 

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. They don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. They are not allowed to touch my section. And as much as you think I am exaggerating, it is true. And as much as you want to say "Any body helps," trust me, they don't. Last season a football refer on A1 that was supposed to read "A big night on tap" printed as "A long night on top". Probably should have gone to Leno.
5. No, he knows we're screwed. I don't care what he thinks though. I have personal pride in what I do, which makes it galling to know it is not up to snuff. I don't half-ass. If they want full game coverage on Saturday, they can pick up another paper. That gets printed at the same place.
6. They will expect what they have gotten the past 10-30 years, I would suspect. Which shall not be what they get.

 

2 things Carl. You have until September to work ouot your game plan, so think about all the ways you can still do...until then

You have what, 12 or so schools to cover? Call every AD and every FB coach -- starting right now -- tell them what you're going to be up against in the fall, tell them you need as much cooperation as poissible frm them tomtry to get stuff in the paper.
Let them know you are not cutting back on coverage but the new deadlines will force you to do things differently.
Go into damage-control mode with the coaches and ADs right now. It will ease the reaction come fall.

 

Hey, first thing I think of when I see an unreasonable deadline that impacts the publication. Sorry if that's a problem for you.

And I've been the guy who has to enforce the deadline at times in my career. But that doesn't make it a reasonable deadline. Without the full story of the deadline's impact, which was only revealed in a later post, I don't think my post is worth calling me out over.

 

I had it even worse in my opinion. I've been trying to run a weekly community newspaper with one full-time reporter since February. For about a month and change, I was working another full-time job in addition to the weekly. Instead of relying on wire copy, I ended up using a lot of intern reporters from the local university. It's gotten me by and several of the interns have actually done great work for me.

However, my publisher refused to let me hire a second full-time reporter for a couple of weeks. I finally ended up enlisting the support of the editor of the other paper in our group. I found out he had a conversation with my publisher on Saturday because my publisher finally relented and is having me hire a second reporter.

I can live with wack deadlines because there's usually nothing that MUST be in the paper that ends late. I can't run a viable newspaper week in and week out with only one full-time reporter.