Tennessee papers to share content

Deadline issues usually only matter on game day, in my experience on pro or college beats. Otherwise, you're getting all your copy in late afternoon/early evening. If it's a game story or breaking news, either the paper decides to get the story in or it doesn't. Everybody would come to an agreement on deadlines and you move on. How is e-mailing/filing your story to one paper any different from e-mailing/filing to two papers? Copy-and-paste is pretty simple.

I'm not jumping up and down about content sharing, but those issues are pretty trivial once you've ruined somebody's day by laying them off.

 

What do they do on breaking news? Who puts the information up first? Lets say Estes is filing stories for the other newspaper and the other newspaper comes into town and gets something Estes doesn't have for his own paper? Do they tip him off?
It sounds shitty to me.

 

If you're sharing content with another paper, you wait for them to send you the stories or you can usually have them file to all of the papers in the state at the same time.

 

Actually, because of the time zone difference, Nashville would be in pretty good shape with deadlines.
That would be the reverse for Titans copy in Knoxville with a late Sunday or Monday night game.
I suspect that the Tennessean would probably still designate someone as the Vols beat guy or gal. Just because of the copy one can generate by hitting preseason media day for the football tab. Unless it was absolutely banned. Game-day coverage, I think, would still be a go but not for photogs. A columnist and reporter traveling could provide a local take that a photog might not be able to duplicate.
Plus, for those 8:45 ESPN2 kicks, you really need someone to file a running gamer, if you want it in the paper the next day.
As I recall, Knoxville does something funky, or at least funky by current standards, by telling readers that the Sunday paper would be delivered late to get UT coverage in and a great cheer was heard across Knox County.
I wonder how that would work for the Tennessean?

 

Interesting. APSE members got this e-mail recently ...

 

They can always use AP if they have to.

 

The more everyone cops out and relies on the AP, the better position AP is in to stick it to member papers with some staggering new rates. Why not? If they're going to be "used" for that which the member paper should do for itself...

 

This is basically found money for the KNS, which I don't think has ever done very much with the Titans. For the Tennessean, it sounds like a brutal deal.

 

Good deal for Knoxville, unless, as indicated by the E&P article, the swap will include news. How much longer you think Knoxville or Memphis is going to maintain a state capitol bureau in Nashville?
Clock is ticking.
And what about Chatty, they are in the news swap agreement, will that also include sports? And will they be maintaining a UT beat writer in Knoxville and sending columnists to games and so forth and so on?

I also heard something else interesting about Knoxville.
They've gotten into the radio business.
The paper buys two hours each day of broadcast time and the paper then sells ads and fills it with the paper's columnists and beat writers jibber jabbering.
This might be old news. Knoxville might have been doing this for years, but I thought it was interesting.

 

I'm guessing it's a swap. We'll give you coverage of the professional teams and anything else you want and you give us UT coverage.

 

I don't see readers embracing this change. That's largely because the money saved from content sharing will not be passed on to the reader or provide a higher-quality product.

I'm wondering how many people will lose their jobs with this move - or how many Tennessee beat writers will be reassigned to preps.

 

As far as I know, Chattanooga will keep its UT beat writer, along with its UT system higher education writer and its capitol writer. So not much will change for the TFP.