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

Looks as though you could highlight the areas you want, and then cut and past the results. Then, clean it up. It may a little faster than printing out each event and typing in what you need.

 

the Class 5A results are insane

http://www.uil.utexas.edu/trackresults/index.htm

 

Perhaps its regional. I would be interested to know how wrong I am instead of a pithy comment. A story certainly on the meet and the locals. But, fifth place in the 800 meters from a guy who is 100 miles from your circulation area? Unless you cover it exhaustively, or you have so many names that it's impossible to run copy, then I don't get it and never will.

There are track agate sites that everyone in and out track knows. Newspapers have been supplanted in our area for sheer results. We do the good stuff now, which is tell a story and highlight excellence.

Is this a paper of record thing or not? This isn't like a box score or a football scoring summary. Website certainly. A full page of agate with declining news hole? That's waste.

 

Nothing to do with actual AP wire ... but anyone else notice tonight's CanWest pre-packaged agate failed to include the Rangers-Red Sox box?

 

Yeah, that would work at a weekly that distributes on Wednesday.

For a daily with a deadline of that night ... no way in hell.

 

These FU AP threads are probably my favorite ones on the entire board.

The MHSAA (Michigan) actually bothers to produce a passable and timely agate package for us (and we're normally OK, because the meet's on Saturday and we have no Sunday edition). All we have to do is change their full nomenclature to fit our needs (i.e. from Podunk Westwood to just Westwood)

Though I have to give AP a hand for reinventing the ordinal number system as we know it. Last week, I got a story slugged RedSox-Tigers 3nd Ld.

Finally, the other baseball team that we follow nationally (the Brewers) were in Miami last week and I couldn't help but notice a marked decline in quality across the board (story, photos, especially cutlines) from most of the other bureaus. Are they always this bad, and which ones make you typically cringe when you know they've got your team?

 

As a complete aside -- sorry -- when looking at those Texas state results, I see the national record in the 3,200 was set last year by a kid named German Fernandez from California ... he broke the record by ... EIGHT SECONDS.

 

it's not worth the time to type. let's just leave it at 'you're so freaking wrong it's funny."'

 

if you've got thousands reading it, how is that waste?

I'm convinced that track sells more papers than almost any other sport, just because of the sheer number of names. grandma and grandpa will buy six copies to send to all their friends if little johnny's name is in agate font for taking sixth in the long jump. and in states/communities that are knowledgeable about and love track, those times will be scanned by many, many folks with no relationship at all with any of the schools or kids involved.