Taxpayers deserve JV coverage.

That's what I used to tell the JV and modified parents. I'd tell them that it took me 40 hours a week to do the varsity coverage, and if I did the exact same thing for the JV and modified, that I'd be working 120 hours a week. And that's not considering the fact that the three levels were playing games at the same time.

 

Actually,
I had the semi-reverse happen.

A parent kept calling complaining that I should a story on the hockey program and that we never cover hockey and these kids try hard, etc. They call my publisher and he says do a story. I call up the coach, who never calls back. I call parent to tell them this. I never hear from them again. It was actually nice.

I had the same team with a girls' tennis team.

 

Are you a publisher? It's not about blowing off the readership. It's about caring about what the readership wants. 95 percent of readers, I'm underestimating that, don't care about youth sports. Advertisers don't care unless the owner of the business has a kid in the program.

 

Have Screaming Mommy and Whiny Daddy called in since Junior lost his starting spot?

Will they keep beating this drum after their kid's no longer on JV?

 

Kids with stepmoms and stepdads work hard too! Harder, even, since they have to make more parents proud of them through accomplishing arbitrary tasks!

As for the second-grade football team, no one who gives a shit doesn't already know all there is to know. It's a NEWSpaper. It should be delivering NEWS.

I'd venture every youth football league in the country has an unbeaten team. Usually it's a result of bad player placement, often at the whim of some coach or other. If the team in question is bludgeoning all the other teams in its league, then the story, if there is one, is that the talent in the league has been poorly distributed. But somehow I doubt the parents will be too thrilled when you write that one.

 

It always goes a little something like this:

Caller- Why don't you cover JV games? Those kids work just as hard as the varsity kids. Why can't they get a write-up?
SE- Because we have four schools we cover in everything. All of these schools have baseball, boys' basketball, girls' basketball, fastpitch softball, boys' soccer, girls' soccer, football and golf. Eight teams a school. Times four that is 32 teams. Add JV in there and we're looking at 64 teams we have to cover. We have three people, paid for 40 hours a week of work. That's 120 hours of staff time a week. You do the math. It's not possible. Choices have to be made.
Caller- Click.

 

Quote of the day.

And seriously, those kids are SEVEN YEARS OLD. What happens when they turn 8? You gonna do a feature story then? How about when they're 10 and only lose 1 or 2 games a year. Another story, right? They were almost undefeated. It was the official's fault they lost, so it doesn't count. You gonna cover the team pizza party at Chuck E. Cheese, too? Interview them as they are handed their shiny gold-painted plastic trophies?

 

Gonna have to steal that one, even though I'm on salary! We have something similar with varsity, with a 11:30 deadline Fridays, if we hear from them after 11, it's a web story and I refer to the web in the scores box on our front. They get the story in print in Monday's paper, and thank goodness most fans have been understanding.

 

As long as you don't make it seem like varsity, and don't overwrite it, I think having JV is fine. We bury JV anything in small type and just put simple facts like John Smith went 3-4 with 2 RBIs in a 10-0 win. That's the extent. NEVER -- by line a JV story unless it is an extremely compelling case. I consider JV like youth sports.

Hell, we don't cover high school varsity well enough. JV?

 

JV is to varsity as practice is to games.

We don't cover practice and you don't cover JV.