Weekly preview stories

[amraeder]

Okay, so we're entering Week 2 of the football season up here, and I just got done finishing up my weekly preview.
I was kind of curious how you guys did these.
We have 5 local schools that play football, and the goal was to say something intelligent about each game. So my system usually involves talking to the coach and/or a player, getting some quotes and throwing together a piece, hopefully with some sort of idea that ties them all together -- this weeks it was about how Hellen Keller could have done better than each of their receptive d's in Week 1.
Problem is, that means I just dropped a 54" bomb on my editor.
54" seems a bit excessive, but it doesn't seem like I was excessive on any one matchup.
How do you guys do this?
(A special football section would be very nice, but we don't have one.)
I only gave the search function a quick glance, but only saw discussion of preseason previews. Hope this hasn't been touched on too recently.

 

[In Cold Blood]

54 inches seems like a lot...

maybe you could do a featured game of the week, rotating between your core coverage schools, and dedicate 15 inches to that.
then use info boxes for the others, including some quick hit stuff on each game.
Make it short and sweet in those info boxes:
Team names:
records:
players to watch:
Keys to the game/why this game matters:

 

[mike311gd]

Just do an in-depth -- maybe six or eight graphs -- on the first school (or like ICB said, the best game), then give about three to each of the other four. You can either rotate it by each school in your area or the best game each week. If you get a quote or two from a coach at each school, or at least three of the five, then it should suffice. They just want the time and place of the game.

I'd say for that type of preview, about 800-900 words should be your max. At least that's how it was at my old shop.

 

[amraeder]

Cool, thanks guys. Keep the thoughts coming. The plan is to sit down with my editor before next week and see if he wants to change the format, so the more ideas you can throw at me, the better. I think all 5 of them are good previews, but this is crazy. I think the desire (which was easier when there were fewer teams) was to give them all equal footing in the preview, but what I did this week is crazy (not every team played last week, so it was easier).

 

[dargan]

Yeah, 54 inches is pretty crazy. Like ICB said, 15 inches, maybe 20, would be good for the top game/most important school, whatever. With the others, just do capsule-style info boxes: teams, site, time, coaches, players to watch (offense and defense), brief touch on the key matchup, did you know question, one-sentence bottom line. Reads easy and people like that kind of organized information.

Already in Week 2? Wow. Zero Week is Aug. 31 down here.

 

[amraeder]

Yeah, 54 inches is pretty crazy. Like ICB said, 15 inches, maybe 20, would be good for the top game/most important school, whatever. With the others, just do capsule-style info boxes: teams, site, time, coaches, players to watch (offense and defense), brief touch on the key matchup, did you know question, one-sentence bottom line. Reads easy and people like that kind of organized information.

Already in Week 2? Wow. Zero Week is Aug. 31 down here.

Yeah, earliest starting h.s. football in the nation, baby!!
But trust, me, you wouldn't wan't to be playing football up here in November.

 

[dargan]

Yeah, 54 inches is pretty crazy. Like ICB said, 15 inches, maybe 20, would be good for the top game/most important school, whatever. With the others, just do capsule-style info boxes: teams, site, time, coaches, players to watch (offense and defense), brief touch on the key matchup, did you know question, one-sentence bottom line. Reads easy and people like that kind of organized information.

Already in Week 2? Wow. Zero Week is Aug. 31 down here.

Yeah, earliest starting h.s. football in the nation, baby!!
But trust, me, you wouldn't wan't to be playing football up here in November.

Halloween marks the date when you don't have to worry about the heat here.

 

[amraeder]

Yeah, 54 inches is pretty crazy. Like ICB said, 15 inches, maybe 20, would be good for the top game/most important school, whatever. With the others, just do capsule-style info boxes: teams, site, time, coaches, players to watch (offense and defense), brief touch on the key matchup, did you know question, one-sentence bottom line. Reads easy and people like that kind of organized information.

Already in Week 2? Wow. Zero Week is Aug. 31 down here.

Yeah, earliest starting h.s. football in the nation, baby!!
But trust, me, you wouldn't wan't to be playing football up here in November.

Halloween marks the date when you don't have to worry about the heat here.

Very different worlds, my friend.
I'm glad football's back, though. Always fun to cover.

 

[Tom Petty]

54 inches seems like a lot...

maybe you could do a featured game of the week, rotating between your core coverage schools, and dedicate 15 inches to that.
then use info boxes for the others, including some quick hit stuff on each game.
Make it short and sweet in those info boxes:
Team names:
records:
players to watch:
Keys to the game/why this game matters:

good advice.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

We're a lot like you. We have eight schools in our coverage area led by the "big four" in the immediate vicinity (staff all home games, district road games and road games against top-10 teams).

We start doing previews as early as Wednesday and Thursday at the latest (if there's a game pitting two big-four schools, we'll do an advance from each side). Biggest games are on Friday's front, while the other four tend to be put in a roundup on our specialty football page (which I get to start doing next week).

If you go on newspagedesigner, you can find some neat Friday football previews.

 

[budcrew08]

Yeah, 54 inches is pretty crazy. Like ICB said, 15 inches, maybe 20, would be good for the top game/most important school, whatever. With the others, just do capsule-style info boxes: teams, site, time, coaches, players to watch (offense and defense), brief touch on the key matchup, did you know question, one-sentence bottom line. Reads easy and people like that kind of organized information.

Already in Week 2? Wow. Zero Week is Aug. 31 down here.

Yeah, earliest starting h.s. football in the nation, baby!!
But trust, me, you wouldn't wan't to be playing football up here in November.

Halloween marks the date when you don't have to worry about the heat here.

Very different worlds, my friend.
I'm glad football's back, though. Always fun to cover.

Aug. 31 is the start here too.

 

[Breakyoself]

Focus on a game of thw week and maybe do shorts on the others. or, if you are going to do a huge 54 incher, break it up by games so it doesn't read like one long story.

 

[amraeder]

Focus on a game of thw week and maybe do shorts on the others. or, if you are going to do a huge 54 incher, break it up by games so it doesn't read like one long story.

I did break it up game by game with little headers for each game.

 

[RedHotChiliPrepper]

We have nine schools in our area with a pretty good DII college in our town and we're fortunate enough to have a weekly 16-page tab devoted to football previews each week.

But the way we try to do it is a healthy feature for about 6 of our schools to go along with about a 10-inch preview and a capsule on every game. In our capsule we do the whole list that ICB provided, but instead of players to watch, we list starting lineups. For the teams that don't get a story of any kind on a particular week, we give them about an 8-inch keys to the game with little tidbits about each team, mixed with a coach quote or two.

I definitely agree that the capsules are far better than preview stories just because, like has been said already, people tend to prefer that quick-hitter basic information. It's a formula that has worked wonders for us.

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

Even hard core football fans aren't going to read a 54-inch epic.

These stories are almost useless sometime. Give some nuts and bolts about each game. What to look for in the other team is the most important, because that gives your readers information that they need, since they don't follow the opponent most likely.


Or an even better idea, which would make for a broader appeal. Do a main feature as the centerpiece of your preview page. Maybe a 10-inch game of the week story and then do capsules for the other games.

 

[Cosmo]

Please tell me you didn't actually throw a Helen Keller reference in there. Please.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

I'm not from Fayetteville, never been there and don't know anyone there.

However, I thought this was a different way to approach Friday night previews: