The news from Hartford

[Moderator1]

Sent via PM this a.m.:

The Hartford Courant sports department lost three people to layoffs: copy editor Mike Bartolotta, high school sports editor Paul Rosano and Patriots beat writer Dave Heuschkel.

They add to the buyouts of copy editors Reid Walmark and Sam Ohri, golf reporter Bruce Berlet, Red Sox reporter Jeff Goldberg and high school sports reporters A.J. Calabro and Will Schubert.

Goldberg will stay on through the remainder of the Red Sox season and then will depart. The Courant is ending staff coverage of Boston sports.

 

[floridanewbie31]

stunning. The Courant used to be a great sports section

 

[BYH]

Jesus ****ing Christ.

You knew Boston sports were next on the cutting block when they cut the Yankees coverage last year.

There are some great ****ing writers being cut there.

Jesus ****ing Christ.

The sports section of my youth--the one that made me want to become a sportswriter--is dead.

****ing asshole beancounters, all of them. Rot in ****ing hell.

 

[slappy4428]

I'm looking at the prep cuts... the prep editor AND two writers?
If the trend is toward hyperlocal, why do you cut the one area that not only understands it but has been doing it for years?

 

[derwood]

Terrible.

 

[Bob Slydell]

If they cut Boston sports, and New York sports, and three HS jobs, what is there left to cover in Hartford? The Whalers? oh wait.

Bad news for all.

 

[Armchair_QB]

I'm looking at the prep cuts... the prep editor AND two writers?
If the trend is toward hyperlocal, why do you cut the one area that not only understands it but has been doing it for years?

Because they make too much money. Can't have that.

 

[Corky Ramirez up on 94th St.]

I wonder what Bo Kolinsky would've said if he saw that the high school coverage he gloriously covered for 30 years was ripped to shreds.

Just incredible.

 

[Mediator]

I'll echo Bob -- What the hell are they putting in the section? Rec softball results? I guess the softball team will be reading but who else? It's so shortsighted.

The decline in ad sales is a business side problem. Why is it being "solved" through editorial gutting?

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

I had a courtesy interview there in 1983; there was no opening, but the SE let me come in for a talk because I was vacationing about 100 miles away. Paid the mileage and offered to pick up the rental-car cost, but I told him that was unnecessary as I'd be using the car not only for vacation but for courtesy interviews two other places. He shrugged as if I were nuts not to take the money anyway. Six years later I talked with a different SE about a job, and at the time people were getting yearly bonuses of about six weeks' pay. I was already pretty far along in talks somewhere else and went there instead, but, geez, Hartford must have been a good place to work at the time.

 

[Beaker]

Damn, damn, damn. Just ****ing awful.

 

[jemaz]

It seems clear from an outsider point of view that staff coverage of the Yankees and Red Sox (and Giants and Jets and Patriots etc....) by the Hartford Courant is very nice for the guys who got to do it, but redundant for the readers of the newspapers, who have more on the Red Sox and Yankees from the New York and Boston papers and ESPN than they ever could reasonably consume. This is a great example of a chance for a newspaper to turn to the local market and actually report on things its readers cannot get elsewhere (and I have no idea what that possibly might be). Its like coverage of the Redskins by the Times Dispatch, Daily Press and Virginian Pilot. My question as a reader of those sections always was why? They never could come close to the Post and others. Their resources were much better spent on the state and local colleges and the things in their back yard.

All that said, I feel for the folks out of a job. This is a time of painful transition for a lot of good people. I hope it works out as best it can for every one of them.

 

[Bob Slydell]

Well, not everyone reads all those other papers. Not covering somethng just because the bigger paper can theoretically do it better is ridiculous.

I work at a smaller paper that goes against two bog boys for coverage of a major D1 school. And our guy does it just as well, if not better, than the bog boys.

So saying the Courant shouldn't cover the NY and Boston teams because the others do it more is kind of ridiculous. I'm sure readers of the Courant are thrilled at the cuts in coverage.

So the former beat guys for the Red Sox can go cover a little league tournament now. Yay for him.

And if the trend is to go hyperlocal, why drop three preps guys?

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Hyperlocal coverage has been the end of a lot of really good people in this business.

 

[Mediator]

Too often local is a code word for cheap.

If you send your readers to bigger papers for pro news, what's the guarantee they read you, too? You make newspapers LESS essential, not more. And good local coverage takes money, too. When a local runner makes the Olympics, or a high school team goes to a big tournament, your readers don't care any less just because it's happening outside your area.

It's a matter of balance.

Editors and mangers say local and dismiss critics as elitist. But the Courant isn't cutting writers and coverage in a belief that it will make the paper better somehow. That's just ridiculous. What it was doing made it one of the best sections in the country every year. And now ownership is backing away from that excellence to save money, not to serve their readers interests.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Too often local is a code word for cheap.

If you send your readers to bigger papers for pro news, what's the guarantee they read you, too? You make newspapers LESS essential, not more. And good local coverage takes money, too. When a local runner makes the Olympics, or a high school team goes to a big tournament, your readers don't care any less just because it's happening outside your area.

It's a matter of balance.

Editors and mangers say local and dismiss critics as elitist. But the Courant isn't cutting writers and coverage in a belief that it will make the paper better somehow. That's just ridiculous. What it was doing made it one of the best sections in the country every year. And now ownership is backing away from that excellence to save money, not to serve their readers interests.

All the preps cuts surprise me a bit. They can get Boston coverage from AP, but it's hard to say you're putting an emphasis on local coverage when you're cutting the preps staff.

Give it five years and half the papers are going to be gone.

I mean, seriously, why would people continue to get these papers?

 

[bigpern23]

I agree with Jemaz ... newspapers should always try to funnel their readers to other newspapers. ::)

The whole "We're going to give them something nobody else can" mantra is great in theory, but it rarely seems to be executed successfully. Frankly, too often, giving the reader "something nobody else can" turns into giving the reader something nobody gives a **** about.

Whatever happened to being the readers' source for all the news they're interested in? If a newspaper gave the reader "something nobody else can," plus gave them all the stuff that other papers do, the reader wouldn't have to go anywhere else.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Local coverage always means cheap coverage.

 

[jemaz]

The problem, as I see it, is that the local stuff doesn't (hasn't) worked is because the people doing it don't really want to do it, thus the arguments here on why Hartford ought to cover pro sports. When I was a sports guy, I fully agreed with all of that. Now that I am a reader, I don't. All I can tell you is what I look for in papers like Hartford, or the Arizona Republic.

The AZ Republic used to send a guy (David ????, the sports editor) to the British Open and other similar places to write columns that neither I nor anyone I knew would read. There was lots of stuff like that that he covered. I cared about ASU and the local high schools (and I agree that it makes little or no sense to cut the high school guys in Hartford). I don't want to read about the Dodgers of the Cowboys or the Cubs in the Republic.

In the East Valley Tribune, I want to read about high schools and youth and recreational sports. And ASU and Arizona and the Pac 10. I am not looking to the Trib for a locally written column on the national baseball scene, which I get (they have cut out most of the other stuff for which I subscibed). I no longer subscribe, by the way, because they cut out delivery to nearly all of Scottsdale north of a certain point, which is remarkably south. But it just saves me money because they dropped the stuff for which I was paying them.

Newspaper editor and reporters lost touch with many, many of their readers years ago -- if they ever were in touch with their readers from the start.

When other people with better resources are covering the big stuff, it simply is not worth it to the readers to unsuccessfully (most of the time) attempt to duplicate those things. Turn to what the market does not have (and just might want). And then the chances of success (and long-term survival) would seem to me be at their greatest. But you have to want to do it and be fully committed to it.

This I know for sure: The other way is not working.

 

[Bob Slydell]

Sending an SE to the British Open, etc., is not the same as staffing a Sox or Pats game though. Now I'm not familiar with the Courant except for what I've read on here and some other places, but if I was in Hartford, I'd consider Boston or New York local coverage.

Agreed, if you wanted to cut the Open, Masters, Olympics, I could see that to a degree. But why give the readers less of a reason to read your paper?