Scheduling a two-man sports department

Just to build off of that "rumbles in the constituency" topic, our paper is really strange as we have the one daily that covers an entire county but two weeklies for two specific towns. Those two weeklies are were the bulk of my work goes and they're about one of the two towns. But, gamers and stuff go in the daily paper since the daily paper goes to those towns but the daily paper has namesake for the biggest town in the county. People in town actually email and complain that my coverage of the teams outside of the town are trumphing the paper's namesake. It's kind of funny.

Basically, we cover the heck out of the three biggest schools in the area and don't do much with the smaller teams. We get some complaints in that regard but not much. We get more about our lack of coverage on the home team than anything.

 

If you're a two-man staff, I assume that means you're covering a lot of preps. Thus, Tuesday is a tough day to take off, given the number of key non-football games that take place on that day. Not sure what it's like in your state, but everywhere I've worked, teams play division games on Tuesday and Friday. I'd make it Wednesday-Thursday off instead.

 

Well, at our shop. We are at 35 hours a week, no OT allowed. We usually do slip in an extra 3 or 4 hours a week, but I still was busting ass off the clock at times (writing from home and e-mailing it in, etc).
The SE is a freak. Plain and simple. He cares waaay to much about the readers and if one complains, he takes their word as gospel. The old ME let him do it that way (when I was working in sports), so that meant split days off while he would work 12 hour days 6 times a week and then would come in on his "day off" to work on stuff as well.
It pissed me off, because it made me look lazy to the front office. Luckily, now, the new ME is more on it and bitches at him for this. The problem is...they still let him manage and the No. 2 is stuck with my old shift. It's sad that they can't get that fixed.
I agree, work your 40 (or in our case 35) and get out of there. Not every thing will get covered and if needbe, use AP on the front...maybe the publisher will get the drift.

 

Couldn't have said it better. I learned a long time ago that you can't get to everything, nor should anyone expect it.

 

We typically work 4 10-hour days...taking Wednesday's and weekends off...the best part of my shop is the flexibility given to move that around as need...working a Saturday and taking a Thursday off, etc. Very much one of the few shops (it seems) that gets "Work your 40" and you're done.

 

I once worked in a one-man shop with two freelancers (a writer and photographer) covering eight high schools, a private school and a semi-pro team for a weekly. My first advice is to schedule wisely. Very wisely. I did a lot of roundups, notebooks and stuff like that. A lot of features as well. I would turn what should be game stories into mini-features. It was stressful as hell and I couldn't wait to get out. The good news is it got me to first gig as SE at a daily. So it obviously paid off. But, man, those 60-70 hour weeks were not fun. That office became my home.

 

When we were a 7-day paper, I took Wednesday-Sunday and the writer went Monday-Friday. When we dropped Sunday, I took Monday-Friday and had to split his days off, Saturday (pure desk shift, barring breaking news) and Monday. Hate doing it, because I know they suck, but its better for me to be in during the weekdays to plot coverage, make photo assignments, deal with soccer moms, ect.

 

We only have two full-timers right now for seven days per week. I do two solo days. Our other person does two solo days. The other three days (usually Thurs-Sat) we double-team, allowing one or both of us to get out to some events. We have one part-timer who writes but doesn't paginate.

We've severly cut back the number of events we staff in person.

Want more coverage? Hire more people.

 

I'm tackling this same problem right now...working hard to provide solid coverage with less staff.

One thing I've found is that instead of racing around town to every gamer in site, we're being much more selective in what events we cover in person and relying more heavily on previewing events and working features.

1) Features are typically longer and can be packaged easier, eating up the space of 2 or even 3 gamers.

2) Hitting the phones for half and hour to get a preview of an upcoming big game saves time vs. sitting in the bleachers for 2 hours at a prep hoops game.

The results...I've heard from people thrilled to know more about what's coming up on the prep scene and other who like the feature stories...while another (much louder) group is frustrated that their kids games aren't in the paper as often as before.

It's all a trade off, and I'd prefer that option over squeezing unpaid OT hours into my week.

The downside is that every school in our area could count on us being at a handful of games each season...now the lower-end teams may see us once.
The worst part is playoff time when we simply don't have the staff (even with allowed OT) to hit everything, and of course for parents those games are life-altering events of magnificent importance.

 

It's far more interesting to read about a human being who happens to play sports and his/her story than to read 20 inches of play-by-play on some game between two teams that don't stir your passions.

 

This is what myself and our sports editor have been dealing with for the last four months, since I've come on board.

We're a daily that publishes six days a week -- no Sundays. As far as days off and such, we rotate: one week I'll have Saturday and Sunday off, and he'll work both days with Monday off. The next, I'll work Saturday and Sunday and take Monday off, while the weekend is free for him.

But it does change. If there are two big local football games on Saturday, for example, we'll suck it up and we'll both cover a game. Also, if Monday is supposed to be my day off because I worked Saturday and Sunday, but there is a big basketball game that I want to cover, I'll move my day off to Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever the day is quieter.

As far as a typical day goes, we have a four-page section and we both cover a game every day. We'll knock out whatever pages we can before games, go to the game, write the story, then finish our pages -- typically the front and jump pages, and whatever other small things need to be done elsewhere.

We cover eight high schools and, to be fair with coverage, we try to figure out our schedule at least two weeks in advance. If we know we're covering team X on Friday night, we know we can cover team Y on Monday. If there's a double local game on Wednesday, we know we can cover a different school/team on Thursday. It's worked out nicely, even on the nights when we may not want to travel the 30 minutes to go see a poor team.

We've worked a lot of hours like this as we try to re-build the reputation of the sports section. (The SE was the writer before I came on-board -- the SE was fired and I came in, so we've been in our positions the same amount of time.) And honestly, it's worked out really well. We're receiving really good feedback from everyone from coaches and parents to our managing editor and our publisher. And, of course, readers.

 

The best way to do it is have a guy start on a Sunday and work four days on two off four on two off four on two off -- and a guy start on Tuesday and work four days on and two off and four days on and two off.

That way both of you get two days in a row off every week and you get some weekends off as well.