Readers' and Subjects' Expectations

This was the obvious answer.

Kinda sad that more people aren't thinking this way, since newshole ain't coming back anytime soon.

 

They'll have you at "Hello."

This type of thing sucks, but it's the nature of our business. You have to get more information than you can print just so you can cover all your bases. It's a lot worse, too, when it's a four-source story, and you may not get to use one of those sources.

But like others have said, this is where blogs can prove their worth. I've been making a point to blog about games I cover when I get home from work to ad details I just couldn't get to on deadline. It's a great opportunity to provide depth to your coverage. We've also been making it a point to put a footer on our gamers referring to "more information available on this this game at our Web site."

With our ever-shrinking news hole and web size, there have been times when we couldn't fit, say, a soccer roundup in the print edition, so we run a brief on the agate page saying the info is available on our Web site. We haven't heard complaints as long as the info is put somewhere.

I think that's part of our industry's future anyway -- using the Web to suplement our coverage, rather than just rehashing everything in the print edition on the Internet.

 

The flip side is that it gives people one more reason not to subscribe to the paper.

Not only can you get it free on the Web, but we'll give you more for free!

 

I know. It's sad.

 

This will test you, Pete. I've found it's a lot harder to write concise stories than longer ones.

 

That explains a lot of your posts. 8)

 

Yeah, this has happened to me more times than I care to recall. I try to plan stuff so that my 30-inch feature doesn't run the same day as the clinching game of the World Series or whatever. But sometimes it cannot be avoided.

Using the web, or a blog, as a supplement is a great idea. Aren't editors always whining at us to blog more anyway?

Yeah, I've had people I interview wonder why I used someone else's quote and not theirs. Truth is,the majority of high school kids aren't great quotes. They say the same stuff over and over and don't talk in complete sentences. If you're covering a team regularly, you find out who is and isn't a good quote. I learned early on it is always better to have too much info (or quotes) than not enough. But, yeah, there's a tendency to want to stick ALL the good stuff in.

On the bright side, 10 years from now, allof us will be working for the web or magazines when the day comes that newspapers are nothing but a front page and a whole load of classifieds.