1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Should JV results be included?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by valpo87, May 4, 2011.

  1. Tucsondriver

    Tucsondriver Member

    Just scores, bottom of the box. A good preps reporter doesn't completely ignore JV's though. If three-time state champion West Podunk has a kid on the JV who's rushed for 1,700 yards and 30 touchdowns, I'd think that's notebook worthy, especially if you can get a good quote from the (varsity) coach about the chances of said kid getting called up for the playoffs.
     
  2. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    I'm at a Patch site, so typically, I'll run JV and middle school if 1) the results are submitted to me or 2) I'm there anyway. For example, basketball and lacrosse typically have JV and varsity one right after the other, so if I'm around anyway, it's normally just an extra five to 10 minutes to get the stats for that. I don't really have to worry about space limitations or pagination, so I can understand why other publications don't really want to open Pandora's Box with this.

    I did cover some of the winter middle school sports more extensively, but that was more because of a lack of HS sports to get to. My high school has a lot more spring sports, so that has made covering the "minor" squads a bit tougher.
     
  3. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    SHOULD they be included? Probably. Too many people around here think it's about what they feel is newsworthy. It's not. It's about what the paying reader wants.

    DO we run them? If someone brings the info to me or calls it in.

    WILL I track it down? No.

    *we don't do JV boxes, just a sentence or two tacked on at the end of the varsity story with the result and leading scorer.

    We're roughly 16K daily and were just talking about this today. Our news dept has waaaay too many rules and guidelines. For sports, our general rule of thumb is if someone wants to submit something, we'll run just about anything. We can't tell you when, but we'll do our best.
     
  4. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    The thing with JV results is this: No one who cares doesn't already know the score.

    (Of course, you can make that argument for an awful lot of varsity sports, too.)

    But yeah, sub-10K weeklies? I agree with Rick. If they want to give it to you, run it. But make sure they know you're not going looking for it.
     
  5. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    If we get a score, we run it. If not, no skin off my teeth. Yes, they try as hard as the varsity. Yes, they may or may not be the future of the program. But when a parent calls and complains about it, it's code for "my kid had a big game and it wasn't in the paper" who won't give a damn about JV next season since their kid got called up or quit for a lucrative career at McDonald's.
     
  6. zebracoy

    zebracoy Guest

    That is 100 percent incorrect. Gatekeepers, etc.
     
  7. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    That is 100 percent incorrect. True for a journalism classrom, but no real bearing on the actual world unless you start taking count of the out of work gatekeepers who stick to some kind of self important code that meant people stopped buying their product.
     
  8. TheShou

    TheShou New Member

    They've got four years of high school (more if they play for the tiny B and C schools) to get their names in the paper.

    News hole is disappearing fast enough as it is. Tell em' to suck it up and hope their kid makes varsity.
     
  9. nmmetsfan

    nmmetsfan Active Member

    The outdated concept of being the gatekeeper runs counter to today's media culture. Newspapers better adapt, because we need readers more than readers need us.
     
  10. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Then why cover sports at all?
     
  11. TheHacker

    TheHacker Member

    Gut reaction to the question is no way. But in your circumstance, as a small paper with only three schools to cover, I'd toss the results into a roundup if the JV folks submit the information. If you were a daily, I'd suggest maybe doing a weekly JV roundup, but as a weekly I think you can still think of it in those terms. You say you have eight pages (I'm assuming with ad content on some), so maybe you can find a 15-inch hole on one of them to throw together a JV roundup. Again, all of this a direct function of your small coverage area. If you had more schools, I'd say forget it.

    No way on coverage of the games. As someone else pointed out, you can chalk it up to an hours problem. If you cover the JV game in addition to the varsity, it basically doubles the number of hours you spend on game coverage, and if you're a one-person show (or even half of a two-person show) there aren't enough hours in the week for you to do that. I don't think most parents or coaches have any understanding of how much work it takes behind the scenes to put a paper together. They think you're done as soon as the game is over.
     
  12. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    YOU ONLY COVER US WHEN WE PLAY ON THE VARSITY!!!
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page