E-mailing results

[PaperDoll]

Basically, send it however you want to. I'll deal with it. Just send it on time. Don't send me results from a Friday football game on Tuesday afternoon and expect anything to get in.

That's our plan. Would I prefer everything to be entered into our online system? Absolutely. But I also realize that's not going to happen. It'll be a headache, but I'd rather have as much information to sort through as possible.

 

[TheHacker]

I prefer email because it's easier for us, since we're not always in the office. All but one person on my staff gets email on the smartphone, so it's really the best way to communicate with us.

Problem is, I can't get coaches to contact us period. Email, phone ... they just won't do it at all. I just got an email from a mother with a kid on a second-place soccer team from a ****-poor league complaining they didn't get much coverage this year. And I told her flat out, your coach has been ignoring our request to contact us with game results for four years.

It's very simple: If the coaches email -- even though it's not the same as a phone conversation -- you still have an idea what's going on with that team. If you see they're winning, it plants the idea in your head that you need to get out and see them. But if they won't meet us halfway, then I have no sympathy for them. Our coverage area is too big to be calling every coach after every game. For those of you in true podunks with tiny coverage areas, you probably need to call them and when you talk to them, really lean on them to contact you after games without you having to prompt them.

You make it clear to them how it works, and if they won't follow through, you get the satisfaction that I had this morning: telling the complaining parents, "your coach refuses to meet us halfway."

 

[Tarheel316]

I don't require high school coaches to email results but I do encourage it, especially Saturday wrestling tournaments when a coach may have results on 14 wrestlers. That's a little tough for a phone call or a voicemail.

As for youth team pics, I pretty much insist they be emailed along with the cutline info. Then it's cut and paste. Plus it protects me from some parent bitching about misspelled names.

 

[Ace]

I would support telling folks they need to email in information instead of faxing it.

But if they want to call, you've got to take it.

You can't expect everyone to do your work for you. And it's hard enough getting a call these says (we didn't get home on the bus till 11:30 and I figured it was too late, etc., etc.)

Hell, if they can't find time to make a call from the bus, you think they're doing to file from the bus?

 

[Tarheel316]

Yes, if they call you've got to take it. No question. That's better than getting nothing.

 

[JosephC.Myers]

E-mails are nice when it comes to some sports and it makes it easier to get it in the paper, but phone calls build more of a relationship with the coaches, I agree.

 

[Mark2010]

I like the idea. As a desk person, it saves me time. Nothing worse than being in the middle of editing a story or doing a photo and having to stop and take 10 minutes to take dictation on a boxscore. It's not a bad idea to have a phone number handy in case you need additional info (did your freshman really score 45 and bank in a three-pointer at the buzzer for the win?). But most games are rather routine.

The info I would like is team record, score, boxscore stuff and a graph or so about what made the game interesting or what was key in the win. That's the stuff I get over the phone. But with staff cutbacks and a lot of games starting late, I'd rather do it via email.

The real plus comes in sports like swimming, track and wrestling where there is a LOT of agate. I stopped taking dictation on agate on that stuff a few years back. No reason someone else can't type it and I can copy, paste and format it.

 

[SixToe]

You can't expect everyone to do your work for you.

Sure you can!

When they don't, you just ignore them. Eventually, they ignore you. Then you cut staff as "the numbers fall." Implement a new strategy of having coaches send live updates at halftime and immediately with the final score. Details can go in later.

When they don't, you just ignore them. Eventually, they ig...


Bad idea, IMO. You're putting another step in their hands to control the information and make the media outlet look bad by not doing enough to get the results.

"We were driving back late, didn't have time to stop and had no cell service. They wouldn't take a call and won't use any information a day later."

If I was a high school AD or coach, I'd put everything on the school's website and not worry about anyone else. Sell ads, generate revenue and tell the local media to jump in the lake. Control the message. Not worry about having Assistant Jimmy have to email a template to a newspaper or call the television station to make the final 30 seconds of the broadcast.

Sorry, but that's what I'd do.

 

[Ace]

I like the idea. As a desk person, it saves me time. Nothing worse than being in the middle of editing a story or doing a photo and having to stop and take 10 minutes to take dictation on a boxscore. It's not a bad idea to have a phone number handy in case you need additional info (did your freshman really score 45 and bank in a three-pointer at the buzzer for the win?). But most games are rather routine.

The info I would like is team record, score, boxscore stuff and a graph or so about what made the game interesting or what was key in the win. That's the stuff I get over the phone. But with staff cutbacks and a lot of games starting late, I'd rather do it via email.

The real plus comes in sports like swimming, track and wrestling where there is a LOT of agate. I stopped taking dictation on agate on that stuff a few years back. No reason someone else can't type it and I can copy, paste and format it.

I like people doing my work for me too.

 

[ColdCat]

So after explaining to each swim coach why I wanted emailed results instead of faxes, the powerhouse team in the area opened their swim season tonight and the coach sent me the results via email

. . . .in a PDF

back to the drawing board

 

[KJIM]

So after explaining to each swim coach why I wanted emailed results instead of faxes, the powerhouse team in the area opened their swim season tonight and the coach sent me the results via email

. . . .in a PDF

back to the drawing board

Did exactly what you asked, though.

 

[jr/shotglass]

I know that collecting local college results is a lot easier because everything IS e-mailed. No SIDs I know deal with phone calls anymore.

I think making it an expectation for high school coaches is a guarantee you won't get 100% cooperation. But the ones who do use e-mail are more efficient.

Our writers generally don't take the phone calls anyway (I know that's not the case for smaller papers), so for us, the "connection" of coaches calling in is a nonfactor. It's just easier for a clerk to have an E-mail in front of them that they can put in at their own speed.

 

[flexmaster33]

So after explaining to each swim coach why I wanted emailed results instead of faxes, the powerhouse team in the area opened their swim season tonight and the coach sent me the results via email

. . . .in a PDF

back to the drawing board

Did exactly what you asked, though.

Yes, you got the results you requested in a timely manner...you just have to sort through the pdf results and pull out the big moments. For us, we list multi-race winners or any close race that was pivotal in deciding the team dual.

I'm all for the email reports, but you can't expect the assistant coach to swing by the office and file a story for you before he heads home ;)

 

[Versatile]

The question I have is how many high schools you cover. If you're at a metro daily with pro and college teams as the primary focus, which doesn't seem to be the case, this is a perfectly reasonable strategy. If preps are your bread and butter, you could really do more damage than good, particularly if your newspaper would only publish full agate for a handful of schools.

If you're at a small paper, the best option would be to have your prep writers spend this season figuring out how each coach keeps stats. If they can send you a spreadsheet soon after the game is over, that's fantastic. If they would be sending you a cellphone photo of a hand-written scoresheet, you have no use for that. If they would have to wait until they got home two hours after the game and 30 minutes after deadline to send you the results, there's only a limited use for that online.

A preps writer with working relationships with the coaches could explain the predicament, and I think you'd find that many of the coaches, particularly small-sports coaches and coaches of bad teams, are willing to help you. Some coaching staffs do it the old-fashioned way, though, and if you want their results, you may need to do it the old-fashioned way as well.

Not many people will take kindly to calling the newspaper and having someone answer the phone only to say "Please e-mail the results; we don't take phone submissions anymore." That would inspire a lot of responses such as, "And you wonder why newspapers are going out of business."

 

[PaperDoll]

I would support telling folks they need to email in information instead of faxing it.
But if they want to call, you've got to take it.

You can't expect everyone to do your work for you. And it's hard enough getting a call these says (we didn't get home on the bus till 11:30 and I figured it was too late, etc., etc.)

Hell, if they can't find time to make a call from the bus, you think they're doing to file from the bus?

We'll take highlights via phone from certain sports (soccer, hoops, baseball/softball, lacrosse), but not full box scores.

The state has a website (affiliated with another media outlet <grrrrr>) where coaches are required to report at least the score of their games in order to qualify for the postseason. That's become part of the coach or scorekeeper's job.

Results from that site can be e-mailed anywhere. My paper is willing to accept those e-mails, even though results from that site have been unreliable.

It then becomes my job to type and verify the box scores. It's still faster than going through a swim or track meet over the phone.

 

[HanSenSE]

The biggest league in our area that has swimming went electronic with results a couple of years back. Takes me 15 minutes max to sort through the spreadsheets with a highligter and pull out the highlights.

The flip side happened yesterday, when one of our teams was on the road in volleyball regionals. The coach usually sends us a stat sheet from Maxpreps, but, since they were so far out of town, we didn't get the stats by deadline.

 

[Simon]

A little off topic but has anyone had their web guy develop a submission form for the website to submit results?

We're going to try and do one for basketball and wrestling this winter after we used an online form for basketball questionnaires and I had so many coaches compliment me that it was a lot easier than sending a hard copy and faxing it.

 

[PaperDoll]

A little off topic but has anyone had their web guy develop a submission form for the website to submit results?

We're going to try and do one for basketball and wrestling this winter after we used an online form for basketball questionnaires and I had so many coaches compliment me that it was a lot easier than sending a hard copy and faxing it.

We had one for youth baseball/softball results a few summers back, and it was fantastic. We just printed them out and rewrote into twice-weekly roundups.

The only shortcoming was not making all the text boxes required, so we still got a lot of incomplete information.

That was pretty much all text though, not box scores.

Our preseason questionnaire is an e-mail template so the coaches can just hit "reply" and type into blank spaces under each question. That didn't require a programmer at all.

 

[ColdCat]

So after explaining to each swim coach why I wanted emailed results instead of faxes, the powerhouse team in the area opened their swim season tonight and the coach sent me the results via email

. . . .in a PDF

back to the drawing board

Did exactly what you asked, though.

Yes, you got the results you requested in a timely manner...you just have to sort through the pdf results and pull out the big moments. For us, we list multi-race winners or any close race that was pivotal in deciding the team dual.

I'm all for the email reports, but you can't expect the assistant coach to swing by the office and file a story for you before he heads home ;)

I'm not expecting a coach to file a story for me. I'm expecting to receive results and prepare them to place in agate in the least time-consuming way. Cutting and pasting from an email saves me a half hour of retyping swimming agate from a fax or PDF. I guess I could just delegate that to my ASE. . . . oh wait, we eliminated that position in March and it's never coming back. There's a finite amount of time between when all these events end and deadline and one person to do everything that needs to be done in that time.

 

[spikechiquet]

So after explaining to each swim coach why I wanted emailed results instead of faxes, the powerhouse team in the area opened their swim season tonight and the coach sent me the results via email

. . . .in a PDF

back to the drawing board

Did exactly what you asked, though.

Yes, you got the results you requested in a timely manner...you just have to sort through the pdf results and pull out the big moments. For us, we list multi-race winners or any close race that was pivotal in deciding the team dual.

I'm all for the email reports, but you can't expect the assistant coach to swing by the office and file a story for you before he heads home ;)

I'm not expecting a coach to file a story for me. I'm expecting to receive results and prepare them to place in agate in the least time-consuming way. Cutting and pasting from an email saves me a half hour of retyping swimming agate from a fax or PDF. I guess I could just delegate that to my ASE. . . . oh wait, we eliminated that position in March and it's never coming back. There's a finite amount of time between when all these events end and deadline and one person to do everything that needs to be done in that time.

I started to write one thing...then realized WHO I am dealing with! LOL
How deep are you going into the agate? I always believed that a meet with less than 4 teams merits only a list of winners (same goes for track). Bigger meets (5 schools and up) can go top 3 places. That saves a lot of time as well. But at least with PDFs you can copy/paste and then find/replace a lot of crap out to make it close(r) to useable than handwriting it out.