How did `your' newspaper cover and play the NCAA men's basketball tournament championship game

[Mr. X]

Did your paper -- the one you work for or subscribe to -- staff the Final Four/championship game? Does it usually. Did it put it atop the cover of its sports section? If not, did it play on the cover? What topped it instead?

What I'm most interested in is how coverage decisions have changed with newspapers generating less revenue and how often a major event -- one of the biggest of the year -- is topped by a local event in play.

The metropolitan daily in the city I long lived in -- and worked for until getting a better-paying job -- staffed it, played it atop the cover of its sports section with a six-column headline.

 

[BTExpress]

Nothing.

Latest McClatchy deadline is 10 p.m. ET. 25 of the 29 papers' deadlines are before 9 p.m. ET.

 

[dixiehack]

I’ve seen maybe two copies of my metropolitan no-longer-a-daily since they axed my department nearly six years ago. But I assure you they didn’t make any effort to play it up in today’s edition, which was the first since the game happened.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

The game happened after our deadline, but we put the folo on our cover for the next day.

 

[MileHigh]

We are strictly an e-edition so it got really good play. We had a Rockies game that ended close to midnight on Tuesday night and it was in the e-edition that got sent out at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

 

[Flip Wilson]

The image I saved was too big to upload as a file, but the link goes to the front page of the Waco Tribune-Herald. That was an interesting photo choice.

WTH-4-6-2021

 

[Flip Wilson]

And the sports front from the Waco Tribune-Herald.

4-6-2021-B1

 

[Mr. X]

Nothing.

Latest McClatchy deadline is 10 p.m. ET. 25 of the 29 papers' deadlines are before 9 p.m. ET.

What kind of coverage was there in Wednesday's paper? Where was the equivalent of the game story played?

Without giving away where the paper is located, how do you fill sections? How many pages do you have on average? I imagine that varies some day-to-day.

 

[LanceyHoward]

What kind of coverage was there in Wednesday's paper? Where was the equivalent of the game story played?

Without giving away where the paper is located, how do you fill sections? How many pages do you have on average? I imagine that varies some day-to-day.

Why don't newspapers return to afternoon distribution? I know that 40-50 years ago the afternoon dailies shut down. But that was at a time when the newsroom and the printing plant had to be contiguous.

Now that plants are often 100-200 miles away why not go back to afternoon distribution so that a paper is not embarrassed by their front page.

 

[ChrisLong]

Why don't newspapers return to afternoon distribution? I know that 40-50 years ago the afternoon dailies shut down. But that was at a time when the newsroom and the printing plant had to be contiguous.

Now that plants are often 100-200 miles away why not go back to afternoon distribution so that a paper is not embarrassed by their front page.

Because kids would have to miss soccer practice to deliver it.

 

[JayFarrar]

Why don't newspapers return to afternoon distribution? I know that 40-50 years ago the afternoon dailies shut down. But that was at a time when the newsroom and the printing plant had to be contiguous.

Now that plants are often 100-200 miles away why not go back to afternoon distribution so that a paper is not embarrassed by their front page.

I think some papers will eventually return to the PM model. Especially in areas that don't have crushing traffic.

The longest one-way drive I could find, after a very brief search, is the Jackson, Tennessee paper is printed in Jackson, Mississippi, which is 290 miles away. The Mississippi press also prints the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, which is 210 miles away.

San Antonio is printed in Houston, 197 miles, the KC Star is printed in Des Moines, 196 miles, and Nashville is printed in Knoxville, 180 miles.

What's really interesting, to me, is when I got in the business, every daily paper in my state had a printing press. Most of the weeklies also had presses.

Press cost was the barrier to entry and a money-maker for the owners as they could print outside jobs. Which, umm, used to be a thing.

There's now, maybe, four printing presses in the entire state and in the region, I can think of eight off the top of my head, The buzz is always about newsroom reductions but press workers have almost entirely been wiped out.

 

[LanceyHoward]

I think some papers will eventually return to the PM model. Especially in areas that don't have crushing traffic.

The longest one-way drive I could find, after a very brief search, is the Jackson, Tennessee paper is printed in Jackson, Mississippi, which is 290 miles away. The Mississippi press also prints the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, which is 210 miles away.

San Antonio is printed in Houston, 197 miles, the KC Star is printed in Des Moines, 196 miles, and Nashville is printed in Knoxville, 180 miles.

What's really interesting, to me, is when I got in the business, every daily paper in my state had a printing press. Most of the weeklies also had presses.

Press cost was the barrier to entry and a money-maker for the owners as they could print outside jobs. Which, umm, used to be a thing.

There's now, maybe, four printing presses in the entire state and in the region, I can think of eight off the top of my head, The buzz is always about newsroom reductions but press workers have almost entirely been wiped out.

I think the Jackson to Jackson haul at 290 miles is the longest I have read about.

But I know Gannett just moved Palm Springs to Phoenix, which is 280 miles. Gannett also owns Ventura. Does Ventura print in Phoenix? That is a distance of 453 miles.

I used to hang around the Denver Post circa 1974. It was explained to me that with the technology of the day the paper had to basically be produced on-site, given the deadline pressures. But no more.

That is why I think the number of newspapers in this country will decline to 100 or so. Papers are consolidating printing at such a rapid rate that only a few plants will be left. And once the physical product is printed at the same place it is cheaper to combine the websites and produce a single editorial product.

 

[rtse11]

Nothing on Tuesday. Baylor feature on Wednesday.

 

[JayFarrar]

I think the Jackson to Jackson haul at 290 miles is the longest I have read about.

But I know Gannett just moved Palm Springs to Phoenix, which is 280 miles. Gannett also owns Ventura. Does Ventura print in Phoenix? That is a distance of 453 miles.

I used to hang around the Denver Post circa 1974. It was explained to me that with the technology of the day the paper had to basically be produced on-site, given the deadline pressures. But no more.

That is why I think the number of newspapers in this country will decline to 100 or so. Papers are consolidating printing at such a rapid rate that only a few plants will be left. And once the physical product is printed at the same place it is cheaper to combine the websites and produce a single editorial product.

Google says Ventura is printed by the LA Times but that was a 2017 article, so that may no longer be accurate.

At an old shop, the company invested in some cutting edge technology that allowed pages to be transmitted wirelessly and the newsroom moved to the old corporate HQ, while the press stayed behind. That was 21 years ago. Then they paid to have a T-1 line installed that allowed the copy desk in one town to build the pages for another paper owned by the company about 50 miles away. And, in a true story, one of the deskers there later went on to work for Gatehouse and used that experience to pitch then build the design hub they have/had in Austin. With the Gannett purchase, I don't know or care if it is still open.

The T-1 line was a daily adventure as sometimes it just wouldn't work and the PDFs had to be copied to a flash and driven to the other paper. The wireless connection was much better but it even it had some occasional hiccups but that was much more manageable.

As for the 100 papers, I think Gannett is already there. If you were in Tennessee and driving across the state and bought a copy of each Gannett paper, I think you'd have very few pages that were much different. So, essentially, they're just zoned editions of a Tennessee daily with a different fronts, a jump page or two and a local news page. So if the daily page count was 24, you might have 16 that are exactly the same, with the remainder zoned to each city/region.

So, for sports, everyone wants the Vols and the Titans and because of deadlines they aren't covering high school sports live. As for news, deadlines have wiped next day coverage of local meetings and such, so, essentially, that means no breaking news in print and putting together dummies for just a handful of pages would be comically easy for the experienced. But since all these people have, for the most part, got gone, the struggle is, I suspect, very real.

 

[dixiehack]

So, for sports, everyone wants the Vols and the Titans and because of deadlines they aren't covering high school sports live.

Your occasional reminder that Memphis being in Tennessee is a mere technicality in the minds of locals.

 

[superhater]

The game happened after our deadline, but we put the folo on our cover for the next day.

Same. Second-day story went on the bottom half of the rail out front. As a smaller suburban paper, will never play wire over local, even when the whole tournament is being played less than 30 minutes away. People ain't buying our paper for our Baylor coverage...TJD deciding to return to IU was the biggest college hoop story in our coverage area last week.

 

[Dan Omlor]

The Lexington Herald moved its printing to the Louisville Courier Journal. Now both the Herald and Courier are moving their printing to Nashville. So anything in the evening is covered two days later. "Yesterday's news tomorrow" is the new cliche among disgruntled readers. However, on another note, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette still prints locally (a few miles outside the city center in Findlay Township), and has some of the best high school coverage in the country. Back in the 20th Century, the Herald and Courier had far better sports pages than the Post Gazette. Now it's 100% reversed. They're awful and it's great.

 

[ChadFelter]

I love college basketball, but there are huge swaths of the country where it just doesn't move the needle at all. And the Gonzaga-Baylor matchup had no juice nationally. (Yes, I know they were the top two teams all year.) I can't imagine many metro papers outside of Texas, the West Coast and some Indiana/Kentucky papers with huge college basketball interest & within driving distance of the arena bothered to send anyone. I know my former metro did not; I doubt it was even considered.

 

[Octave]

520,000 people dead and there's concern over whether amateur players+fraudulent supercoach are getting the proper respect in the fishwrapper. **** them.