What people want in a sports section

Add video of puppies or kittens ...

 

As an overworked SE, if I fill my section each night, get it out on deadline and include enough local content to keep upper management off my back, that's a good night's work.

The paradox with prep sports is that there's always an interest in it, but it's obviously a minority. The town I work in is about 100,000, and there's a ton of interest in prep/local sports. I can't attend an event without getting into a discussion with 10 different people (coaches, athletes, ADs, parents, etc.) about the local sports scene, and I enjoy these conversations.

I'm aware, however, that people who want to read about preps have a vested interest in preps. Then again, aren't we catering to people who have a vested interest in what we cover? I'm of the mindset that you're going to lose subscribers constantly every day, so you may as well work to keep/get the ones who MAY subscribe. If it's some kid's parents just for four years while their kid is on the local high school hoops team, then so be it.

You're certainly not getting anyone to pay for your product to read NFL wire content, I'll tell you that.

We're all on borrowed time, anyway.

 

This is good and it can be difficult as an overworked SE. I would say check crowdtangle and add local schools FB pages to account and keep up with them can get very good ideas. Whether it's local HS football team volunteering at local Soup Kitchen or whatever. Try and find stories of local teams bringing the community together. Just a thought.

 

This is just my personal opinion, but it's ideal if you as an editor can get out in front of those things. There's nothing wrong with running a submitted photo, but speaking from experience it'd be nice if more schools/teams would tell us about these types of things before they happen so that we can be there to cover it. Same for players reaching milestones on the court. It's easy for schools to complain that we weren't there to cover a big milestone, but it's hard to do so if we don't know it's coming. When you cover a dozen schools and 3-4 sports per school in a specific season and X number of players per team, it's nearly impossible for a sports staff to keep everything completely up to date on who's approaching what milestone.

Better than just following on social media is to develop relationships with ADs and coaches, and hopefully they will keep you in the loop on these things.

 

I agree with that but that's why staff needs to go out to games and be there. You hear things at the games you probably don't otherwise. Also I agree with getting out in front. Preferably doing features ahead of things that mesh sports & community are ideal. There are a ton of small-town features for sports, one example in a local school I covered was first cousins that are neighbors. They are two of the better players on the team and the coach says he puts them back on punt returns because of how well they communicate. This team returns a few punts every year for 6 so it was a cool feature when they were headed to state.