Wash Post: With Readers, Sports Pages Can't Win

fishwrapper · Oct 15, 2007

Frank_Ridgeway said:

fishwrapper said:

Night editor in 1880: "Our deadlines are near impossible thus making it difficult for edition submission."
Night editor in 2007: "Our deadlines suck."

This isn't new, either. The only thing that is new is start times for events. Events used to be scheduled in accordance with newspaper deadlines. Nowadays, events are scheduled for primetime television ratings and Madison Ave.
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Nah, the deadlines are worse. Anyone who lives near a large city could see why. Suburban sprawl has meant longer commutes, so people want the paper earlier because they get up earlier. Even though the places I've been recently have newer and faster presses than the old letterpresses the papers had early in my career, the deadlines are worse, and it's because readers' lives have changed. We have to drive farther to get it to them and we have have to get it to them earlier.

About 10 years ago the SE wasn't feeling well and called to ask me to fill in for him at a meeting. Really strange. It was off-campus, in a hotel conference room. The topic was [whisper]deadlines.[/whisper] Now a lot of these people were lifers there, including the editor -- this was all new to them. And the publisher decided we needed to lose, I forget, I think it was an hour, something like that. And the editor says to me, well, what happens with sports? And I say, well, we're not going to get probably anything but the East Coast games in the first edition, and maybe not all of those if there's overtime or extra innings. And he says, well, what's the impact of that. And I say, well, every other newspaper our size has the same deal, including our competition in a larger city nearby -- people won't be happy, but it's not like they can find anything better on anything else that's on newsstands around here, and in fact I've worked on the West Coast and first-edition readers don't get all the games there, either, if it's a large paper. OK, then, the editor says, thanks for coming.

I'm a guy who cares about the product, but it's just been something I've never questioned, it's just been a given for my entire career. You don't like an incomplete sports section? Well, we didn't tell you to move to that new subdivision 50 miles away -- the people who live nearby get the final edition. But now it's changed with the Internet and people expect completeness. The best answer is to spend tens of millions of dollars to add more presses, but it would be cheaper and easier to just ... umm, reorganize ... which readers get screwed worst.

One newspaper I worked on practiced a sort of demographic redlining with deadlines. Its traditional way of shipping papers had been that the areas farthest from our city got the first edition because it took longest to drive it there -- although since there's really not much traffic late at night, you're really talking only an hour max. But lots of rich folks lived there. So they decided to give the rich folks way the hell up there a later edition, and give the first edition to poorer people living right outside the city. This sucks very bad, but I bet we'll see a lot more of this. Poor neighborhoods not a mile from the paper getting the early edition, rich suburbanites 50 miles away getting the final.
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Wonderful stories, but missed the point entirely.
Journalists complained in 1880. And they complain in 2007. They're deadlines, not suggestions.
The anecdotes tell us there are more people living over more square miles.
Maybe because there are 300 million of us. All of which aren't educated. All of which do not speak the language -- and if they do speak the language, it is their second. All of which couldn't give two shits who won the Mariners' game. So, newspapers have to drive farther to find the Mariners fan (your i.e., rich suburbanite). So, to find the Mariners fan, we need to move the deadlines up.
I'm aware of the concept.
In addition, you have other factors. Delivery time to dropoff centers. Traffic. Diesel fuel cost. Size of trucks allowed on highways and byways. The contracts signed by delivery crew. Etc.
That's why the deadlines are earlier. It's not because corporate or the publisher wants an inferior product. You have to be able to deliver the product in a time that is useful for the consumer.
Then you mix in Sports as a primetime event, and you have an impossible.

Brings me back to an earlier post:

The problem is exacerbated because those results are readily available elsewhere and spotlights a newspaper's handicap of an expensive and antiquated delivery paradigm.
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I restate not because I'm fond of quoting myself. (Although, I liked that one a little bit.)
But, earlier deadlines is a newspaper's attempt at adapting. Nothing more.

The Commish · Oct 16, 2007

Frank_Ridgeway said:

One newspaper I worked on practiced a sort of demographic redlining with deadlines. Its traditional way of shipping papers had been that the areas farthest from our city got the first edition because it took longest to drive it there -- although since there's really not much traffic late at night, you're really talking only an hour max. But lots of rich folks lived there. So they decided to give the rich folks way the hell up there a later edition, and give the first edition to poorer people living right outside the city. This sucks very bad, but I bet we'll see a lot more of this. Poor neighborhoods not a mile from the paper getting the early edition, rich suburbanites 50 miles away getting the final.
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You mean like this?

fishwrapper · Oct 16, 2007

Par Ridder's motives appear to be aligning political affiliation.
But, the concept goes past that. Declining readership in urban centers has long been a problem for big metros. There are exceptions, New York being the big one. But as urban centers became highly ethnic, newspapers searched for the suburbs. Many big papers added suburban editions.
La Opinion (Spanish) and Chosun USA (Korean) sprout up in Los Angeles. The Nikkei Weekly, Japan Times and Mainichi Daily in Seattle and San Francisco. The Cuban Nation in Miami. Al Dia in Dallas.
The pie gets smaller and finding the readers will be the ultimate test.

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Wash Post: With Readers, Sports Pages Can't Win

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