Outdoors coverage

[Mark DeCotis]

Just curious: How are other newspapers handling outdoors coverage, especially fishing, hunting? Are other recreational outdoor activities such as running, cycling, triathlon, hiking finding their way into regular outdoor coverage?

Do photos of caught fish, deer, etc. still have a place in your coverage? How about fishing tournament coverage?

Do you have space dedicated to outdoors each week and if so how much?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[Mark DeCotis]

Thank you.

It really matters here as well, on the east coast of Florida.

Trying to take temperatures of other outlets to see they are handling it. Our outdoors guy got bought out last July and this is the first summer without blanket coverage of fishing tournaments and the anglers aren't happy.

Mark

 

[JayFarrar]

We have an outdoors columnist in the chain. He writes a weekly notes package, a feature, a column and one newsy story. All on traditional outdoors coverage — hooks and bullets.
Some papers spread it over two days, some run it Sunday only and spread it out over two pages.
If we didn't have outdoors copy, the readers would revolt. Plus it makes money since the outdoors places buy ad placement on the page or pages.

 

[dargan]

We have a weekly outdoors column with an outdoors page, and we have plenty of pictures of dead animals: deer, alligator gar, catfish, and wild hogs.

Since we're heavy on high school sports, we have to come up with a lot of non-traditional sports features for the summer, and outdoors is often the way to go. I did stories on several outdoor events last year, including bass tournaments and "adventure racing."

 

[sportsed]

Any list of top outdoors writers would have the Times-Picayune's Bob Marshall at or near the pinnacle. The guy gave up the Saints beat for the gig years ago, and he'd tell you it was the best move he's ever made. The paper also has had a separate person who handles fishing as a beat, though I don't know if that's still the case.

 

[-Scoop-]

We run an outdoors column every Sunday, and during buck season we run shots for the local Big Buck contest during winter.

 

[SCEditor]

I'm at a 16K daily, and we have one person who is responsible for our Outdoors page and Golf page. Of course, he's been here 40-plus years, so whenever he decides to retire, I'm sure that position will cease to exist.

 

[Batman]

We used to have an outdoors columnist who wrote every week, but he died last year and we haven't replaced him yet. We still run the dead deer pictures in the winter, I think almost as a tribute to him. The guy was a native of this burg and worked at the paper for at least 30 years.

On another note, I think we're still looking for an outdoors writer. If anybody's looking for that type of gig, PM me.

 

[Moderator1]

My old paper no longer has a full-timer. Before I left, I hired a freelancer to do 2-3 columns a week with a big outdoors page on Friday that includes a column, a fishing report, a "try this" and events rail. He also does a blog that is updated more regularly than the paper's other blogs. Guy is doing a terrific job.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

The Globe and Herald each have weekly fishing reports (Friday) in the summer and skiing pages (Thursday) in the winter. Hunting coverage is sporadic, but it's tough to shoot a gun off in these parts without hitting something besides game.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

We have two outdoor contributors — a hook guy and a bullet guy.

The hook guy is regular as clockwork; the bullet guy tends to take it easy in summer after turkey season ends, and before dove seaon begins.

 

[Rosie]

Our Sunday paper has a separate outdoors section. We all help with that section, not just the sports department.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Local paper has been pretty much all hooks, no bullets/arrow for a long time now. They've recently reinvented the page as an almost-all-saltwater sports page — fishing, surfing, and so on — with some freshwater fishing thrown in. May change some as fall go-out-in-the-woods-and-drink-beer season .... er, hunting season comes closer.

 

[BrianGriffin]

We have an outdoors page Thursdays-Sundays that's the back page of the section to put it in color position. The layout is done by the SE (so the ASE/slot guy doesn't have to add that to his plate) and most of the writing is done by a news reporter in what can be called a happy circumstance. When we lost our last outdoor writer, this newsroom worker (she was primarily clerical with her duties) volunteered to do some outdoor writing and proved to be very good with it, so it stuck.

We're in Louisiana, so hunting and fishing is so big, we tend to keep the Outdoors page to those things. We have a Sunday recreation page that absorbs sports like hiking/biking/multi-sport racing/boat racing, etc., though we do not have a writer for that page like we do outdoors, so it's catch as catch can for those sports. Also, news has a health/fitness section and it's not unusual for me (I have to handle the rec page) to look at it and say "hey, that should have been on the rec page." BUT the rec page is an inside page and if we have a locally-written story on, say, a mountain biker, then it's likely to get on the health/fitness page because that's a section front and the rec page is not.

 

[bpallack]

Our outdoors reporter belongs to the Features section and mainly does a "hike of the week" type feature, plus we have a ton of hikes online. Other recreation doesn't get much coverage.

What about creating a fishing/hunting portal online where people can upload their pictures, but not have them printed in the paper? Bird-watching is a big deal here and our readers upload bird photos to our gallery all the time.

 

[DanOregon]

I've been under the impression that "blood sports" are on borrowed time as newspapers continue to gear coverage to older female readers, hence the dilution of business coverage and emphasis on sports stories about Junior (and I ain't talking Earnhardt) that can be clipped and sent off to Aunt Ruth in Dubuque.
Anyone else seeing this?

 

[BrianGriffin]

I've been under the impression that "blood sports" are on borrowed time as newspapers continue to gear coverage to older female readers, hence the dilution of business coverage and emphasis on sports stories about Junior (and I ain't talking Earnhardt) that can be clipped and sent off to Aunt Ruth in Dubuque.
Anyone else seeing this?

Down here, the picture of junior with the deer carcass does get clipped and sent to Aunt Ruth... but this aunt Ruth's in Gun Barrel City or Cut-n-Shoot (actual Texas towns...).