Identity Crisis

[Lollygaggers]

The youth sports thread got my wheels spinning and I wanted to see what you guys thought.

My paper's size (50,000-70,000 circ.) puts us in kind of a limbo state. We work the prep beat hard and we run a rec/youth page each week (though it doesn't get a ton of names in, mostly schedules and features) and we cover local colleges, but we also run a lot of national wire copy, cover professional teams in the region (about 50-90 miles away) and devote a lot of space to state colleges. I kind of see this as an identity crisis. We're trying to be all things to all people, rather than deciding to be a metro paper (cover all the big stuff and squeeze the local) or a strictly local paper (pump up the local stuff and put everything else in roundups), we try to do both. This day and age, I don't think we can afford to do this.

Do any of you have similar experience with this? It seems like there's got to be more papers our size out there struggling with this or that are past this, and I'm curious as to which direction you think works best. Or can you still do both?

 

[KYSportsWriter]

Without the pro beats and about 30,000 fewer subscribers, I'd say you described my paper in a nutshell.

 

[zebracoy]

Thus, his issue.

I think you're fine. You can't overload on the local stuff, because you're going to turn off a lot of readers who couldn't care what the local high schools do.

Then again, you can't load up on the pros, because ... well, I can't think of a good reason why you don't that would describe what I care about. Probably because people who are in the community wouldn't like that.

I think a good paper has a good balance of everyone's interests.

 

[SCEditor]

You do the best you can, and that's all you can do. Seriously.

There are people who are going to hate your paper or your section no matter what. Yes, you're being pulled in many directions, but I think having balance among all things might be more beneficial than focusing on one side and not the other.

Of course, I'm also the guy who received a message on my voice mail saying we don't cover the Baltimore Ravens enough. Baltimore, according to Mapquest.com, is 581 miles away from our town. Go figure.

 

[Big Buckin' agate_monkey]

Hell, I'm wondering if he described my paper. ... except we don't do the youth/rec page.

 

[Mark2010]

Lots of places are facing this dilemma. If you don't put a cap (whatever you deem reasonable on the youth/rec league agate, schedules, etc.) it can eat you out of house and home.

Ditto, to a lesser extent, for preps.

All of that is important, sure. But, as said above, there is a percentage of readers who don't have roots in the area, don't have kids and could care less what the high schools and little leagues are doing. I moved to a new town three days after high school graduation and never did follow the prep stuff in the new town.

I've always advocated a balance between local, regional, national. I know some will disagree, but that's my belief.

 

[CM Punk]

Yep. Balance. I would dare say that we cover too much high school sports at a smaller paper. It's all we do, every day, cover kids. Hardly anyone besides a high school coach is featured that is over the age of 18. We could probably trim a position since we have nothing above that level to cover. No pro or college team for hundreds of miles. But that doesn't mean that people don't want to read the wire copy on those.

So, balance. You can't spend a ton of cash covering something that a lot of people won't care about just because it's local. But you can't run so much wire that you might as well be a one-man slotter and nothing more.

 

[Lollygaggers]

I totally understand the balance, but I guess I was getting more at the use of resources. Why spend the mileage and travel to send somebody to the pro team an hour away when we can use them to boost our local coverage and get the pro stuff from the wires? I would never advocate cutting out national coverage, but it's the use of resources that gets me sometimes.

 

[93Devil]

I don't know if this answers the question or not, but I can read about 45 different opinions about the Redskins online.

If I wanted to read about the best high school players in Richmond, I have maybe 2-3 sources at best.

If I wanted to read about the Master's, I have tons of places online.

If I wanted to have a good idea of Richmond's local golf courses, I have 2-3 sources.

 

[forever_town]

The problem with the "which one do we go for" approach is that you can potentially stretch your staff too thinly if you try for both. The problem with picking one of the approaches is that you're likely going to upset part of your readership.

Go all local and only put the national stuff in roundups, and you upset those who don't care about the town's zoning meeting and who want to read about the Middle East crisis. Go all major metro and you upset the folks who want to read about the town council voting on raising taxes or who want to read about little Johnny Bedwetter's two points in a 73-6 loss.

That said, I don't think hyperlocal works at all. I'd probably go more metro.

 

[Mark2010]

Yep. Balance. I would dare say that we cover too much high school sports at a smaller paper. It's all we do, every day, cover kids. Hardly anyone besides a high school coach is featured that is over the age of 18. We could probably trim a position since we have nothing above that level to cover. No pro or college team for hundreds of miles. But that doesn't mean that people don't want to read the wire copy on those.

So, balance. You can't spend a ton of cash covering something that a lot of people won't care about just because it's local. But you can't run so much wire that you might as well be a one-man slotter and nothing more.

Damn, sounds like my last newspaper.

As primarily a copy desk guy, in recent years, I did get frustrated with the shrinking news hole and too much copy. Damned if I left out some item on NASCAR or the PGA Tour, someone would be bitching about it the next day. I was actually pretty damn good at squeezing a lot of info into a small news hole, but more and more often, I'd find myself waking up in the morning (or early afternoon) and wonder how on earth I was going to squeeze it all that night, especially on heavy prep nights.

It almost required throwing creative layout ideas and multi photos out the door for the sake of shoe-horning in as much as I possibly could.

 

[micke77]

we're a small daily six days a week that runs local and national, with major emphasis on the local. when it comes to crunch time on deciding which story (or stories) to run--local or national--i go with local. i think particularly with smaller papers, the lifeblood is local stories, photos...and i think that's one big thing really going with the smaller papers in that they can have that chance to put more emphasis on the local stuff; now that has to do mainly with our daily stuff; on sundays, we get a very good mixture of both.

 

[deskslave]

I don't know if this answers the question or not, but I can read about 45 different opinions about the Redskins online.

If I wanted to read about the best high school players in Richmond, I have maybe 2-3 sources at best.

If I wanted to read about the Master's, I have tons of places online.

If I wanted to have a good idea of Richmond's local golf courses, I have 2-3 sources.

How many people want to read about the best high school players in Richmond, though? There's a reason 80,000 people show up to Redskins games and 1,000, on a good night, show up for a high-school basketball game.

And as for golf courses, if I thought small- to medium-sized papers could do objective coverage of local golf courses, without being influenced by the publisher or the ad department not wanting anything derogatory to be said, then maybe I'd see more value in that. And even if that interference isn't there, how much is there to say, really?

 

[Mark2010]

we're a small daily six days a week that runs local and national, with major emphasis on the local. when it comes to crunch time on deciding which story (or stories) to run--local or national--i go with local. i think particularly with smaller papers, the lifeblood is local stories, photos...and i think that's one big thing really going with the smaller papers in that they can have that chance to put more emphasis on the local stuff; now that has to do mainly with our daily stuff; on sundays, we get a very good mixture of both.

I would say for small papers (under 20K or so), local is the lifeblood. When you get larger than that, more readers are looking to you as the primary news source, so there's an imperative to balance local, regional, national.

 

[micke77]

Mark 2010...i agree. and we're under 20k...now today, we went heavy as possible on henderson-rice in the hall, dungy retires, tebow surgery and clemens on hot seat as possible, but had to do some of it in a roundup..but we got it in there along with our local stuff....

other folks in similar situations as ours, being the small daily and all, do you sometimes do a big National Sports roundup in order to get in as much as possible...the space, of course, dictates so much of what we can do and i really want to get more and more national stuff in...suggestions would be welcomed...

 

[pseudo]

we're a small daily six days a week that runs local and national, with major emphasis on the local. when it comes to crunch time on deciding which story (or stories) to run--local or national--i go with local. i think particularly with smaller papers, the lifeblood is local stories, photos...and i think that's one big thing really going with the smaller papers in that they can have that chance to put more emphasis on the local stuff; now that has to do mainly with our daily stuff; on sundays, we get a very good mixture of both.

I would say for small papers (under 20K or so), local is the lifeblood. When you get larger than that, more readers are looking to you as the primary news source, so there's an imperative to balance local, regional, national.

Our local dailies are both south of 15k, but the nearest metro/TV stations are 70 miles to the north. Local content is the top concern, yes ... but for most of their readers, there IS no other print news source in the region, and they would not be serving their readers well by de-emphasizing national coverage.
That doesn't mean 2,000-word NBA roundups when the nearest team is a four-hour drive from here, but I ferdamnsure would like to read about the NFL playoff games without logging into a computer ...

 

[Hustle]

I don't know if this answers the question or not, but I can read about 45 different opinions about the Redskins online.

If I wanted to read about the best high school players in Richmond, I have maybe 2-3 sources at best.

If I wanted to read about the Master's, I have tons of places online.

If I wanted to have a good idea of Richmond's local golf courses, I have 2-3 sources.

How many people want to read about the best high school players in Richmond, though? There's a reason 80,000 people show up to Redskins games and 1,000, on a good night, show up for a high-school basketball game.

And as for golf courses, if I thought small- to medium-sized papers could do objective coverage of local golf courses, without being influenced by the publisher or the ad department not wanting anything derogatory to be said, then maybe I'd see more value in that. And even if that interference isn't there, how much is there to say, really?

And not only that, but I hope - and I'd like to think my bosses hope for me - that I'm a competent enough reporter to find a story that'll be different than what everyone else is writing about. On days when major news happens, that won't be the case of course. But on the run of the mill Wednesday, I do my damndest to find something that distinguishes our coverage. Sometimes I do well, others I don't, but I'm giving it what I can.

To the original question: We use almost all of our manpower on preps. I wish we weren't quite so prep heavy, and I wish we had more leeway to go find some actual community stories. We talked a good talk about that, but it has yet to come into any real action.

 

[micke77]

Hustle...you're talking getting a different "local" story from eveybody else or a national story? we've got a larger paper 70 miles to the west of us and one about 40 miles to the east and the latter usually gets wind of some of the local stuff we're doing and will cover some things, do features...but i am always trying to get something different from them...ironically, i have a big feature in today's paper on a former coach from the area and i came to find out that those two larger papers have one on him tomorrow. it's a matter of keeping the ol' nose to the grind stone, i guess.

 

[Hustle]

I'm talking about me going up to Redskin Park on Wednesdays and doing stories that the Post, Times, Examiner, Free Lance-Star and AP aren't doing. The Redskins are local for us by almost everyone's definition (with the notable exception of the people that run our paper).

 

[micke77]

gotcha..yes, we try and do the same thing when covering one of the NFL or major league teams in our area. more times than not, we can almost always land a local angle to it. we have always also kept up with ex-area prepsters or college players who have gone on to pro ranks and either do features, boxed in statistical updates, etc..readers love that kind of stuff and, also more times than not, i have covered most of these folks when they played at the HS or college levels.