What's the bigger story for a local paper?

B.. without a doubt.

Charity road race = fun run, not a real sports story.
Local kid in nearby National level golf tournament = real competition, real story

 

I just want to know what the original poster chose from the beginning ... ;D

A or B?

 

10 miles and 15 miles are both technically out of your coverage area?
Sorry, having to drive 12 miles just to get from my house to the office and having traveled 17 miles just to do a volleyball preview, I can't relate to this dilemma.

 

Can someone from news side or features take the road race story, so you guys can cover the golf tournament? The golf tourney is a bigger sports story, for sure, but the road race would make a nice feature for your paper.

 

The road race already happened.

So wait...scheiza...you want to do a story on an event you'll have NO art of, NO other local people mentioned, that already happened? In a weekly? You're already dated before you hit the stand.

Cover the golf, get good art, run an inside feature on the guy who came in second. He was second in a non-important race that already happened.

I'm with Rhody on this one.

 

The race is over? This isn't even a question. B... B... B

 

Yeah, the race being over changes everything.

 

The purpose of the question was to help explain to my younger co-worker what story was more newsworthy.
I explained that while the race was better for our paper, a feature on the teacher who came in second - no mention of the agate - isn't as newsworthy as the local girl performing in a nearby national level tournament because while local is good, a national event with a local twist is better.

We're Rhode Island. We're small. The Norhthern part of the state is outside of our coverage area and that's where this tournament is. He says it's not as big because it's outside our coverage area. I tried to explain that it's not like out of the coverage area in other states, where some of you have to drive hours to leave your area.

Anyway, it was an exercise to help my less experienced co-worker - who happens to abhor golf and doesn't want t go to the event Friday that I can't make because I'll be doing stuff for a wedding.

 

Is it a one-day golf tournament? What day do you publish? If friday the final round? there's a lot of questions you haven't answered that go into the decision-making process?
If friday is the last day of the tournament and you publish on Sunday, then golf should take priority because it's more of a live event for you than the race. if the tournament is friday-sunday and you publish wednesday, bag the friday golf coverage and show up sunday,get art and write it as a feature lead for wednesday. If you publish saturday and the golf tournament is still going on, use race for your lead, get a phone update on your golfer and follow that up for your next issue.

 

I vote for A, but I'm pretty sure OP wanted us to vote that way.

 

I wouldn't read either, but I'm sure there's probably (a few) people who would. I'd do both by phone and spend my time working on enterprise that, in the long run, either helps more people or helps me or hopefully both.

I don't find athletic events that benefit a cause especially interesting. Say it benefits research to find a cure for something. Fine, that's nice. Say we cure cancer. Great. But it doesn't mean fewer people are gonna die. They're just gonna die of something else eventually. So really. I look at a headline, it says 600 locals run in a race to benefit foot odor, that's really as much as I need to know about it.

Local golf kid, yeah, you have to do it. But again, you write about the same kid over and over again and I see the headline that tells me what she did and that's all I need to know. The previous 50 stories have about covered any background a kid is likely to have acquired in, what, 15 years? By the time she turns pro I'll be so fucking sick of reading about her that I'll be rooting against her.

I'm not trying to be mean, I just don't think either story is worth a large investment of resources. Just slam 'em both out, give better play to the one with art and work on something interesting.