Washington Times sports

Congratulations, Moddy. How'd it feel to hold the first one in your hands?

 

Congrats to Moddy and the WT sports staff. I thought the first sports front looked good (and better than the A1 posted here).

Tough time of year to spring back to life if you have limited space, though.

Best of luck moving forward.

 

An excellent comment. Some sections out there are less about sports and more about silly things. I avoid them whenever possible.

 

Great point. I'm jealous as well. I'm interested to see how the Times re-establishes itself.

 

I understand that virtually everything can be "found on the internet." However, if I have the newspaper in my hands and all of a sudden I have a need to look at the standings or a specific box score, I expect it to be there. I can walk to my den and check the computer that is perpetually logged on, sure. But why the fuck should I have to do that?

This is like my grocery store. When I lived in Manhattan, I accepted that grocery stores were small and that there fewer choices of, say, chocolate chip cookies. Now that I live in a normal place, I expect my grocery store to offer multiple choices. Even if I go for Chips Ahoy! every time. Part of being a good grocery store is offering a vast array. And where I live, I have no reason to settle for a crappy old little grocery store. We have shiny new big 'uns, and that's where I'm going.

I did a critique in the 1980s for a suburban daily that was running linescores instead of box scores, although the paper had plenty of space and staffed the local pros' home games. I told them that they were just giving readers one more reason to choose the metros (at the time, there were two). I still feel that way, internet or no internet. Yup, you're different, all right, and I understand you are using that space savings to run non-agate content. But when the competing paper offers everything, that's what I'm buying.

 

How a place uses agate can make a big difference. Packaged well, the right agate can go a long way.

I agree with those who find it exciting to see a rebirth and what the staff will make of it.

 

Disagree. We get a lot of feedback from our readers on our agate page. Some of the things we tend to think are expendable are what we often get complaints about.

 

But that's YOUR paper. It might not be the same for everybody else. And while we'd all love to provide the reader with "everything," the space to do that no longer exists for a lot of papers. Like it or not, "everything" continues to get redefined, and you have to adjust.

Secondly, the squeaky wheel theory applies to newspaper readers just like anything else. Complaints could very well come from a vocal minority. You want to base significant decisions on what may be a handful of people?

 

We believe true sports followers can get more out of a box score than from a 2-3 inches of text. We provide both at this time.
So far we have held off the anti-agate faction, even though it is counter to what newsside uses. Agate is a pain in the butt for our computer people, and since we are sports, not news, our problems usually get put on the back burner.

 

Box scores take up more space then they are worth; however, standings are an absolute must, IMO. At least to this sports fan, who looks at standings in print every time he opens a sports section.

 

If you are a paper with limited space and resources, which covers about 99.99 percent of papers, I like the idea of packaging standings and the local box score with the story on the local team and ditching the traditional agate page. Then again, if I knew what I was talking about I might still be a sports editor.

 

I like that idea, too. Some papers do something like it. But the chains want everything on one page so it can be shared.