Using circ numbers to plot coverage

You have to take upside into account, too. If you're selling 602 papers in Town A (with 1200 households) and 434 in Town B (with 2100 households) then you have to consider the possibility you have more potential for growth in Town B. But that has to be a unified decision made with circulation's backing.

At our 38K with 55-plus schools, we have a couple of geographic outliers that nonetheless buy a significant number of papers. It's worth the effort for us.

 

For four years or so, I covered a D1 college in a town where the closest rack was 10 miles away. Didn't sell a single paper in the college town. I don't know how many times I interviewed new players and was asked what paper I wrote for and when the story was running. After a while the answer became, "Give me your e-mail address. You won't see our paper around here anywhere."

Made no sense to cover that school whatsoever, but I got to build my clip file, make contacts and cover a great beat. That beat was eliminated not long after I left, I believe.

 

Yes, it is a contributing factor. Not the ONLY factor, but a contributing one.

bigger schools have always gotten the lions' share of the coverage because they have more students, more parents, more alumni, more fans. That's just reality.

Now, if you are comparing two similarily sized schools and town, equidistant from your home base, you might want to be a little more even. If only to not give fans in Town B a reason to moan "Well, the Times always favors Town A ahead of us". Show them you do care and perhaps the circ numbers there will increase.

 

And then there was the story of a ad salesman who came in and ask if we were going to cover Bumfucville, a town more or less on the far side of a county we pulled out of except for racks, because he had a person who wanted to take out an ad for the football preview. We didn't, and they didn't.