SID stories on the front page

[Inky_Wretch]

My former shop ran two SID gamers from the D-II college in town on the sports front today. I never allowed that when I was SE.

Do your papers have guidelines about that?

(Also, these weren't road games. They were played in town. One writer was at State U's game just up the road. One was covering playoff basketball. The third had the day off, I guess. That meant of the five local bylines in today's paper the SID had three - one baseball, one men's basketball and one women's basketball.)

 

[SnarkShark]

Did the SID get a byline?

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Yes, "Joe Smith, Podunk U SID."

 

[Riptide]

What a proud day for publishers.

 

[SnarkShark]

Yes, "Joe Smith, Podunk U SID."

Gross.

 

[Batman]

If you can't cover them in person (and the staff was obviously occupied elsewhere), can't hire a stringer or get a story from another paper, yet it's important enough to warrant a front page presence, what are you supposed to do? You can't be in two places at once, no matter what some management types seem to believe about the laws of physics.
This was obviously not ideal, but you get the material whatever way you can, right? If you ignore it for the sake of appearances, or pull together a lesser story just to avoid having an SID byline in the paper, who does that really serve?

 

[MNgremlin]

We run SID copy on front page, but don't give a byline. We mention it came from SID at the end.

 

[MNgremlin]

These are my favorite SID stories!

 

[awriter]

My former shop ran two SID gamers from the D-II college in town on the sports front today. I never allowed that when I was SE.

Do your papers have guidelines about that?

(Also, these weren't road games. They were played in town. One writer was at State U's game just up the road. One was covering playoff basketball. The third had the day off, I guess. That meant of the five local bylines in today's paper the SID had three - one baseball, one men's basketball and one women's basketball.)

Could the third writer have taken off on a different day? And how important is the D-II program to your readers?

 

[deskslave]

Is this something readers notice? Or is it another of those things that we agonize over but that actually doesn't make nearly as much difference as we probably want it to?

I agree that it's odd to give the SID a byline -- what ever happened to "Staff reports"? But still -- you can't cover everything, whether you have a staff of three, 30 or 300. There'll always be something that slips through. And this sort of thing becomes ever more prevalent if your publisher insists on an all-local front, or cuts your wire service.

And who knows why the third guy took off -- maybe he was sick, or getting married, or worked the past 13 days without a day off. Maybe his normal day off is Wednesday and that's even busier, so he agreed to switch.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

Whatever happened to "staff and wire reports"

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Could the third writer have taken off on a different day? And how important is the D-II program to your readers?

I'm not sure about the scheduling thing. But as far as the program, it was source of many reader complaints/questions when we didn't, say, have coverage of road games. We always staffed home games back then.

 

[busch]

Don't ever pick up the local paper after they moved to three days a week. But I know the guy who covers the local college does very little work. I looked at the local college page on the paper's website. There are 15 articles listed - 10 by the SID, 4 by the guy they call the beat writer and 1 by another staff writer. I would be ashamed if I was the beat writer.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

And in an odd twist, the guy who was off on Saturday wrote a story in today's edition about what a great crowd was at the home game the paper didn't staff.

 

[Starman]

I'd credit it by name, unless ordered otherwise.

If the readers read an absolutely fawning puff piece, they should know if it was written by the SID or the paper's staff writer.

And the readers should know when the paper's too cheap to staff events in person. Probably 95% of the readership won't care, but 5% will.

 

[gravehunter]

I've tried to tell the guys on our desk to never give an SID a byline. I am also trying to instill in them that a lot of SIDs don't even know how to write. If all we have is something that came from and SID, we need to rewrite it and clean it up. If we need to put the local college on the cover and we don't have anyone to staff the game (or the team is out of town), we just write off of the boxscore.

 

[Flip Wilson]

I've tried to tell the guys on our desk to never give an SID a byline. I am also trying to instill in them that a lot of SIDs don't even know how to write. If all we have is something that came from and SID, we need to rewrite it and clean it up. If we need to put the local college on the cover and we don't have anyone to staff the game (or the team is out of town), we just write off of the boxscore.

In my six years as an SID, I got a byline (that I didn't ask for) once. We were hosting an NCAA regional golf tournament, and I did pretty much all the work for the reporter, compiling information on the teams and players coming in. (It was a LOT of work, but it was part of my job; I'm not complaining, just sayin'.) And when the package ran in the paper the day of or day before the tournament, I had a co-byline with the golf writer. Totally unexpected.

And...some SIDs can write. Pretty much every game story I sent in ran just like I wrote it. I didn't write from a homer's point of view. I wrote it from the POV of the hometown paper, concentrating on our team and players. But most everything I sent in ran verbatim. I had a really good working relationship with that paper.

Oh, I did get bylines when I strung high school football on Friday nights, but those were bylines that I earned.

 

[Starman]

In my six years as an SID, I got a byline (that I didn't ask for) once. We were hosting an NCAA regional golf tournament, and I did pretty much all the work for the reporter, compiling information on the teams and players coming in. (It was a LOT of work, but it was part of my job; I'm not complaining, just sayin'.) And when the package ran in the paper the day of or day before the tournament, I had a co-byline with the golf writer. Totally unexpected.

And...some SIDs can write. Pretty much every game story I sent in ran just like I wrote it. I didn't write from a homer's point of view. I wrote it from the POV of the hometown paper, concentrating on our team and players. But most everything I sent in ran verbatim. I had a really good working relationship with that paper.

Oh, I did get bylines when I strung high school football on Friday nights, but those were bylines that I earned.

The point of giving SIDs credit isn't about credit. It's about blame.

 

[BDC99]

Whatever happened to "staff and wire reports"

This. Unless you have an SID of the quality that I've rarely encountered, you rewrite what they send, supplement with stuff from the box score and use a staff and/or wire report byline. I don't think I've come across a college news release that could run on our cover as is.

 

[daytonadan1983]

Gee, thanks BDC99.

Now put yourselves over here on the dark side: We had a road game last Saturday and there was no local media. I'm thinking to myself "why do we even bother to do game notes anymore?"

And here's another story -- I had the Baylor-Michigan State women's game in Orlando over Christmas break for AP. Two top 25 teams and I was the only media there not affiliated when any school. Just saying.