Thank you, Texas AP, for making my night exceptionally hellish

Everyone hatin' on Rhode Island We still have class meets and what not... Only like 20 high schools or so at them, but still. It's not like we're Maine. </shifting the focus>

 

WTF? Track agate? Should be a website reporting the meet. I don't care how big or small. It's easy enough to get this stuff on the web and prinited out.

A desker, perhaps low on the totem poll, is made to type it in. If it's that critical to have in your paper, I would make my own arrangements.

I hate track agate. I don't think anyone reads it. Serisouly folks. If my kid isn't in the darn agate, who the heck combs through it?

We run it at my place because we have always done it. Wasted space, and wasted time. At one time it was important when newspapers were papers of record. But with the web and electronic archiving, those days are over.

 

Having been the person at several different state meets ... it's hard enough pulling together 4 or 5 stories (at a minimum, it always seemed like) for the next day's edition, much less add agate responsibilities on top of that.

AP has sent out state HS track agate in every state I've worked in and it was a godsend.

Because in every instance, the formatting on the various state associations' web sites doesn't come into the realm of newspaper agate formatting. Meet Manager does offer a "newspaper format" and it's useful as a beginning point, but only that. At one point in my last newspaper job I wrote an Applescript for NewsEdit that turned MM's "newspaper format" into actual agate and it was a bitch to do. Version 4 was close-but-not-quite-there and I assume nobody who followed me there tried their hands at writing version 5 of that script (which is more like writing actual computer code).

You're also assuming that the state association gets results posted in a timely manner ... which isn't necessarily a given.

 

You have no clue how wrong you are.

 

As someone who spent a little more than 18 hours covering said event, there had to be something wrong in the flow of information. The results were posted in a timely manner in the press box -- coincidentally right behind the seats reserved for the AP -- so you can't blame the UIL this time.

 

Texas just has too many schools, too many people, too many events. Way too much. UGH!!

 

The UIL scheduling the state track meet on the same weekend as the state softball tournament and the NCAA super regionals is another matter. They reversed fields on that swine flu debacle more times than Gale Sayers. Someone's head should roll.

 

One of the many years I covered the Louisiana state meet, I had the additional duty of typing and filing all of the agate (that was Class 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, B and C). I still had stories to write.

I don't remember the reason.

My neck hurts, but I'm almost finished.

 

A lot of people seemed to want to shift this from AP to the people who needed it on parts of this thread.

If it has been a staple for Texas AP, it should have been sent, complete. Without the attitude.

 

Yes, unless AP had informed otherwise. And in this day and age "because they've always done it" isn't a reason to assume coverage.

 

We have this discussion a lot, and I've never agreed that only kids involved and their parents read these things.

I was heavily involved with track and field when I was younger, so I read all the section and regional and state results to see if there were any extraordinary times, distances or heights, and I pay extra attention to the distances because that's what I ran many moons and pounds ago.

I also check for results by local kids, even though I haven't had a kid in high school for three years. (And, in fact, I still scan the box scores from other sports from the school my kids went to.)

Maybe all of this still places me in a vast minority (oxymoron?), but I just think there remains a place for this in newspaper coverage, if not in the paper itself, then on the website.

 

A-FREAKING-MEN.