1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Why run attendance?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by trifectarich, Sep 4, 2008.

  1. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    I agree with you completely. It's most likely a complete waste of half a sentence.
     
  2. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    It is of news value for two reasons:

    a) It provides information for the reader regarding the atmosphere of the game: was it a fully-packed house, or a sparsely-attended half-empty joint? That provides an insight as to what it was like to actually be there.

    b) the second reason is, many teams now play in venues which are substantially (in many cases totally) constructed at taxpayer expense, and in addition, most teams have a sliding-scale contractual agreement with the stadium owner (i.e the financing governmental unit) in which they pay rent (more commonly, the government pays the team) on a basis determined on attendance, so it actually is information the taxpaying public needs to know. Although the actual figures are faked and obfuscated to such an extent to be almost impossible to obtain.
     
  3. Hank_Scorpio

    Hank_Scorpio Active Member

    If short on space, umpires are always the first thing to go. But I don't mind leaving it in there, because a lot of fans recognize umpire names and want to know who was behind the plate, etc.

    Same with time. It does add to the story.


    One good way to save space is to make all that stuff underneat the pitching lines in paragraph form, instead of a return after each.



    Attendance is great to put in the boxscore, but in most cases, no need to put in the story.
     
  4. crusoes

    crusoes Active Member

     
  5. nibs price

    nibs price Member

    Still makes me chuckle (and cringe) to see the old "attendance off a dollar bill" trick pulled at college events. The computerized ticketing systems are making it rarer, but I still occasionally run into someone who uses it.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page