How do I end a tradition?

[Smallpotatoes]

A youth team has a good season. Maybe it wins a championship or comes in second. Maybe it's an all-star team.
At some point a parent gets an idea:
"Let's take a team picture and send it to the paper."
Sometimes, I wonder if these people think they're the only person who ever thought of doing that.
These photos seem to come in bunches, all at the end of the season. I guess it's a tradition. In many cases, these people don't send write-ups all season long, then they come out of the woodwork at the end of the season.
Is there any way I can discourage people from sending end-of-season team photos? It gets a little boring looking at an entire page of photos of two lines of kids holding trophies.
And you always forget to publish one photo, then have that person call you saying how disappointed the kids are.
Any chance I'd get fired for saying "Well, life is full of disappointments, get used to it."?
Also, is the number of people telling you they're disappointed in something you're doing or not doing a good indicator of how well you're doing your job?

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Put them on your Web site. Bandwidth is much cheaper than newsprint.

 

[slappy4428]

Publish on a space-available basis. Only one photo per team (multiple tourneys).

 

[DemoChristian]

I know of a relatively small paper that simply won't run submitted pics. That would put a stop to it.

 

[Cadet]

Set a policy and stick to it. Publish the policy so everyone knows what it is. Then, when people gripe, point to the policy and throw up your hands.

 

[buckweaver]

Don't publish an entire page of these photos. Spread them around for the next few weeks/months, and run them on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Put a little box in the paper saying something like "all submitted photos will be run on a first-come, first-serve basis as space is available." Then stand by that policy. You'll still get some griping, but you can always point to that.

But if you're a small, local paper, there's definitely a place for community sports. Don't quit running them altogether. That's a terrible idea.

 

[Cadet]

Good point, and allow me to modify my above thought: Make a policy THAT WORKS FOR YOUR PAPER and stick to it. Maybe it's one day that photos run. Maybe it's spread out. Maybe it's all photos are due on the 1st of the month. Whatever. Make a policy, publish it, stick to it.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Get with the ad people and see about selling ad space in classifieds around bunch of these photos.

 

[expendable]

I take my sweet-assed time getting them in, and it seems to slow them down. For some reason, I get bombarded at the busiest times. Conference tournament season for prep and college basketball must be a trigger to send in four-month-old football pics (I put an end to that years ago, thank goodness).

 

[spaceman]

But the kids worked so hard....

 

[Dickens Cider]

Why are you costing my child a chance at a scholarship, Smallpotatoes?

 

[Mystery_Meat]

When I was at a weekly, I had weeks where I was able to fill an entire section with submitted photos. Couldn't do that, because I wouldn't feel right getting paid to do jack all outside of laying it out. So I tried to spread 'em out over the weeks until eventually I hit a point where I'd run them out. When parents asked (and I was lucky, I got a lot more askers than complainers), I'd tell them that I'm committed to running their photo, but sometimes space doesn't allow it, so I get it in on a first-come, first-serve basis. But I've never intentionally NOT run a photo, unless there was an obvious reason (poor quality shot, no names, same shot for the fourth week in a row).

Whatever you do, be consistent about it. I ran all team photos in three-column horizontal (any smaller, and you can't make out faces, thus defeating the purpose). Individual shots could be smaller. But always in black and white, because my inside color pages were rare, and I didn't want to have to explain why the U-13 Bashers got color while the U-13 Thrashers didn't.

But unless you're at a bigger paper (and perhaps not even then), you can't look down on 'em. For as boring and as worthless as we find them, people like to see their kids in the paper. At a community paper, that's worth at least as much as any awesome story idea we could create.

 

[Football_Bat]

We forward them to the news side to run in the Friday community section.

 

[expendable]

When I was at a weekly, I had weeks where I was able to fill an entire section with submitted photos. Couldn't do that, because I wouldn't feel right getting paid to do jack all outside of laying it out. So I tried to spread 'em out over the weeks until eventually I hit a point where I'd run them out. When parents asked (and I was lucky, I got a lot more askers than complainers), I'd tell them that I'm committed to running their photo, but sometimes space doesn't allow it, so I get it in on a first-come, first-serve basis. But I've never intentionally NOT run a photo, unless there was an obvious reason (poor quality shot, no names, same shot for the fourth week in a row).

Whatever you do, be consistent about it. I ran all team photos in three-column horizontal (any smaller, and you can't make out faces, thus defeating the purpose). Individual shots could be smaller. But always in black and white, because my inside color pages were rare, and I didn't want to have to explain why the U-13 Bashers got color while the U-13 Thrashers didn't.

But unless you're at a bigger paper (and perhaps not even then), you can't look down on 'em. For as boring and as worthless as we find them, people like to see their kids in the paper. At a community paper, that's worth at least as much as any awesome story idea we could create.

I usually try to slowly spread them out (we're giving them at least $150 in free space for crying out loud), but around holidays, I'll go heavy on the submitted pics for that very reason. It gets the page off my desk quicker, and it's good to give some extra time to production, just incase something goes wrong. The post office appreciates it too. But yeah, it feels like stealing.

 

[ZummoSports]

We have a community page on Sundays that we put all that wonderful stuff on. The less actual work we have to do for that page, the happier we are.

We usually get enough to churn those things out 2-3 weeks in advance.

 

[Write-brained]

Start a new tradition.

 

[huntsie]

We have a policy that team photos run, not for tournament championships, but for teams that have won a district or provincial championship only.
Good teams might win four or five tournaments a year and we've told readers we won't run the same photo of the same kids holding their finger up where the only thing that changes is the banner or trophy in front of them.
Saying that, we have a space on the stat/agate page for a "photo of the day" to break up our agate package. Most times it's an unusual wire shot, or a second shot from the same event by our photographers, a photo which might not otherwise make the paper. Sometimes, we drop the team shots or year end school athlete of the year photos in that spot. We hesitate to do it too much -- don't want that spot turning into the "team shot of the day" or whatever. But it seems to work. If you have a pile of them, you can string them down the middle of that stat page, burning off two or three at a time.
Agate readers will read the page anyway and read right around them. Mommies and Daddies who don't normally read the stats might start.

 

[SportsDude]

We have a "youth sports picture page" we run once a week. The advertisers seem to love it and it's a nice place to put submitted team photos.

I second Cadet's notion: make a policy that works for you and stick to it. One of my old publisher's decided to bring over her former paper's policies on everything and it turned into a complete disaster. Do what works for you and make everyone follow the rules.

 

[SixToe]

Set a new policy with your editor that works for your paper.

That way you can point to the policy and then to the editor when the calls start coming.

Put 'em online on a giant never-will-die "Great Youth Sports" section or something like that. Web, web, web.

 

[Raoul Duke]

whatever you do, dont run photos of teams that didnt win something or finish in first place. Once you start running photos of teams that finished second in this tournament, third in this league, fourth in their division but really showed great effort and heart, the slope gets slippery fast