Next up -- Waterloo, on Saturdays anyway

[steveu]

Per the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (wcfcourier.com) and KWWL-TV (kwwl.com)...

No more Courier on Saturdays. Waterloo's paper becomes a six-day a week print product. No word on whether Friday night football, etc., goes online only for Saturday.

Yikes. That area's about 100,000 metro and it's a fairly nice city (if not old-fashioned looking). This will seem weird, but I guess it's the direction we're headed. Thoughts?

 

[Mark2010]

For a paper that size to lose Saturday is worse than to lose Sunday or Monday. It's hard to promote yourself as a big-time preps player if you're not going to publish a saturday edition.

Years ago, I turned down a job at one place for that very reason. All the Friday night stuff would have to go in the Sunday paper, making it 36 hours old by the time the paper got out. And then, all the Saturday stuff (colleges,etc.) got squeezed out.

I think if I had to lose a day, I'd lose Monday. Even though you'd lose the Super Bowl stuff and all. Less happening on Sunday in most communities.

 

[JBHawkEye]

Bad decision.

Very good area for high school sports — the dynasty of Aplington-Parkersburg High School football is in the area. So, what the hell, let's cut out that Saturday paper. Makes no sense.

It's a great sports staff, I know a lot of the guys there.

 

[BrianGriffin]

That's going to be great when UNI has that Friday night game against Wichita State on the diamond...

 

[Bubbler]

Wow. The biggest thing of a local interest there is UNI football, a national power at the FBS level. Barring some sort of special section, that means all preview coverage will have to revert to their Friday paper, which I'm sure is already spoken for with prep stuff.

I second the quality of their sports staff, good luck to the guys there.

 

[JBHawkEye]

Wow. The biggest thing of a local interest there is UNI football, a national power at the FBS level. Barring some sort of special section, that means all preview coverage will have to revert to their Friday paper, which I'm sure is already spoken for with prep stuff.

I second the quality of their sports staff, good luck to the guys there.

It's been a year or so since I've seen the Courier, so I don't know if they were still doing a nice Saturday morning college football preview section.

I think it was a 6-pager, great layout. The one thing I noticed was a lack of ads. My thought was, in a two-city area crazy about not only its local university, but Iowa and Iowa State, you couldn't sell more ads? That's a major failure of the ad department.

 

[D-3 Fan]

I'm late to this, as I didn't know it was posted as a topic. Most of us were perplexed when the Courier decided to do a Saturday paper again. Growing up, my routine was going or playing prep football Friday night, watch UNI, Iowa, and ISU on Saturday, and then waiting anxiously on Sunday morning when the Sunday paper came so I could go straight to the sports section to see who else in high school sports won on Friday night.

After time, I started to enjoy getting the first word. Bubbler, it isn't just the three big schools (including Drake). The Courier sports had prided itself for decades on prep sports throughout NE Iowa and the small colleges (Wartburg, Upper Iowa, Luther). The staff didn't lose anyone, though I believe Matt Coss (might be the wrong guy) has taken a position with the Muscatine Journal, where his wife is from.

The Courier will be fine, the sports guys are the best in Iowa, at least in the eyes of this hometown homer!

 

[JackReacher]

So this ain't about Waterloo, Alabama? Damn.