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So how's your tab coming?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by bumpy mcgee, Aug 17, 2009.

  1. tapintoamerica

    tapintoamerica Well-Known Member

    I seriously didn't think anybody did tabs anymore.
     
  2. EagleMorph

    EagleMorph Member

    80 pager due out a week before the first game. Finishing up my writing this weekend.
     
  3. apeman33

    apeman33 Well-Known Member

    I have one of the three rural schools's surveys in. That school is the one in the same county as the major school, so that's OK.

    If we end up doing just pages within and the two farther out schools don't respond, I may just drop them. They're both in the county north of us and I don't honestly think current ownership gives much thought to that county. As far as I know, there's no place in that county where we sell the paper off the rack. You want it up there, you have to subscribe and it's mail only. In the promotional flyers, the ad reps only speak of the two in-county schools, so it's not like there will be any ads from the businesses in the other county anyway.
     
  4. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Interesting experience. Hit all the deadlines, tab gets printed and distributed ... and many of them have a least a few pages that, due to press trouble, are basically unreadable. Big Boss Man says, "print it again, insert it again." Costly decision (35K copies), but the right one. None of us wants to see that happen again.
     
  5. JakeandElwood

    JakeandElwood Well-Known Member

    I just have one more story and some capsules to do.
     
  6. doggieseatdoggies

    doggieseatdoggies New Member

    We were told to cut back the size, do capsules on perimeter teams, focus on the 10-15 core teams and we dropped four pages off last year's section. Suddenly, the other day, advertising gives us the original page count. 12-page sections also totally screwed up the color, meaning from our original plan, most of the big schools will get black and white pages and all but one color page is going to be jumps.

    I'm sick of this - sick of presenting a plan to the ad staff chief four months in advance and having one of her goons come to me two weeks before deadline asking what our plan is, themes, etc., when no one has looked at the detailed email I sent in the spring, or they would have known. I try to get those to them in plenty of time to get feedback on possible promo tie-ins and ad campaigns. Last year they promised ads on team pages which was a clusterfuck. The preview was paginated and repaginated twice because the ads were in the wrong place. We had no order on the teams, which we usually do by class. The ad chief said, "next year we need to go to a tabloid." Great idea. Fewer color issues and easy layouts for "team pages." Do they hold to it, hell no. It's broadsheet city.

    Our whole staff wants to say eff you to the whole idea of a section. No one outside us gives a shit about quality, or a plan. They'd scramble five pages to get a one-inch ad in post-deadline. It's a zoo. It's been something like this for four straight years. It always messes up any final proof go-over.
     
  7. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    Doogie, if it makes you feel any better, I'll share my ads department story with you.

    Our winter all-area tab was a clusterf**k. So, naturally, I wanted the spring one to roll smoothly. Literally from the time the winter one went to press until the week before the spring one was set to launch (Something like three months), I would go into the ad boss' office at least once-twice per week and make sure she had all the details (Eight page section, broadsheet, strip ads across the bottom, all in color, section would be simply added to our pages).

    Exactly two days before we have to have it done, ad lady starts panicking. Apparently, the part about it being added into our section didn't sink in (despite the weekly reminders).

    For it to run as a part of our section, we would have needed a minimum of 12 pages in the sports section that week for all our papers (Two pages fresh news, eight page special section, two pages for community news/obits). That means, thanks to our company policy of matching, that the "A" section would also have to be 12 pages.

    Well, no one from ads told the news folks that. And despite the fact that I told each news editor this once a week for three months as well, it gets decided that we can't have it be part of the paper, meaning that in addition to all the work we had to do to finish this on time, we had to go out and find two-three more pages of local copy per paper...that day.

    Boy, was that fun.

    From that point on, I've decided to start planning for every conceivable way the ads department can screw up. I tell them this on a regular basis, though they think I'm joking because I'm such a nice guy.

    Ads departments-> You can't live with them, but if push comes to shove, your ass is gone before theirs.
     
  8. doggieseatdoggies

    doggieseatdoggies New Member

    Yeah, but they suck, and so does the mind-set that the people buying the ads don't care about what kind of piece-of-shit package their ad is put in for the kind of money they pay to run it in the publication in the first place. We're clueless.

    I will not put out another publication without some set guidelines. No news supplement ever is as screwed up as ours is. I'll go fry burgers before that happens. My BP cannot take it. It takes me a week to relax after the stress caused by nothing more than incompetence.
     
  9. doggieseatdoggies

    doggieseatdoggies New Member

    And for your extra three pages, I would have solved it with picture pages, with fine print at the bottom explaining why. But that's just me.
     
  10. 2underpar

    2underpar Active Member

    we put our high school tab to bed Thursday. It printed and will run tomorrow. Now, it's on to the 16-page college broadsheet.
     
  11. Rumpleforeskin

    Rumpleforeskin Active Member

    Printed today and it looks good.
     
  12. Den1983

    Den1983 Active Member

    Our retail ad manager was relieved of her duties last week. Prior to that, they had yet to sell an ad. The tab is scheduled to run to press on Thursday, and we're supposed to get dummies on Wednesday. To say the next three days will be interesting is putting it lightly.
     
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