What will sports journalism look like in 10 years?

[Central-KY-Kid]

I earnestly wonder whether prep sports coverage will exist in 10 years.
Does anyone without participating children really care, and why should they?

In certain areas, prep sports coverage won't die any time soon.

My area being one of them.

Where KYSportsWriter and I work, preps is 90 percent -- maybe higher -- of what we do.

Although we're 40 miles south of Louisville, haven't covered the Kentucky Derby or the pre-week workouts in years. Haven't staffed a U of L home men's basketball or football game in four years. Same for UK 80 miles to the east.

Never covered any of the three MiLB teams within two hours (Louisville Bats, Lexington Legends, Bowling Green Hot Rods). When Cincinnati Bengals had training camp at Georgetown College, didn't even bother with them.

Our paper has never staffed a race at Kentucky Speedway and won't be going to Valhalla for any pro golf/Ryder Cup events any time soon.

But our preps coverage has grown by leaps and bounds.

Put UK or U of L Associated Press SEC or AAC gamer on page 3? No one cares. UK went to overtime at home Saturday and U of L knocked off a top-10 team on the road on a jumper with 2.2 seconds left and neither story made the front page because of prep basketball coverage and prep wrestling state championships.

Put a non-district girls' prep hoops gamer between a 6-10 team and a 8-8 squad on page 3 (with photo or two and linescore/boxscore) and people will call and complain that we didn't care about the game or didn't staff it.

Of course, not all papers are like us.

Justin Bieber could die of an overdose and it might be on page A4 of the A section. Obama could have a heart attack and it wouldn't make the A section front page if lives. If he dies, that MIGHT be enough to make our front page.

Local, local, local. No matter what.

Not that I totally agree with it, but that's what we're told to do.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

I understand that strategizing.
But it has not rescued newspapers.
Thanks for the thoughful explanation.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

I understand that strategizing.
But it has not rescued newspapers.
Thanks for the thoughful explanation.

I agree that it has not rescued newspapers. Not sure there is anything tried and true that can.

It's worked for us, though. Our expenditures went way down. The college conference tourneys, NCAA basketball tourney and bowl games cost us a ton of money in hindsight. And not a good return on investment.

Our readership has stayed steady. Sunday is up. We saved money by combining sports with classifieds, which was cost effective because of no color ink on back page and no more filler pages (can't have five-page standalone sports section).

And although we have several U of L and UK fans (and even WKU) in the area, as well as Bengals/Titans/Colts for NFL and Reds/Braves/Cubs/Cardinals for MLB, local readers haven't given us grief for not providing more coverage than standard AP stuff found on Yahoo! and ESPN and 90+ websites.

Preps is what we can offer that's different.

That being said, not sure how much a metro in Kentucky -- notably the Courier-Journal in Louisville and Herald-Leader in Lexington -- will deal with preps in 10 years. Of course, those two papers have different issues with more and more college-focused websites and publications springing up.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

It's sad to me that it's not even about competing- capitalism with fervor- but making a measly profit margin.
What will happen to hyper-localization when high school football is litigated out of the society?
That could well be upon us in 10 years.

 

[93Devil]

I'm not a huge tech guy, but how much square footage are the servers taking up in your shop right now?

Looking at the Richmond Times Dispatch, I could see them going all digital and having the following staff, and this is assuming these people are churning out at least four bylines a week or covering a 4-5 games and doing a feature each week.

Four full time sports writers
Two entertainment writers
One person doing obits and other agate crap
Ten news reporters - split them up as you like
One feature columnist

One editor for sports and entertainment content
One editor for news content
One editor shared between the two
One tech guy to handle servers and website
Three photographers
One general management position the editors report to.
One HR person
One accountant

That's between 2.1 million and 2.5 million in salary.

Can an online newspaper even generate that revenue? That's 50,000 subscribers paying $50 a year. How much are online ads?

If you cutout delivery, you cut out inserts.

 

[93Devil]

No, but it will be a colossal undertaking to even make a digital version of this work. Doing away with print and going all digital might not be the answer because there might not be an answer at all.

I'm guessing 50,000 customers paying a $100 a year might make this work. But, ****, that's a ton of online subscribers.

 

[93Devil]

Extra points for basing all views on the line of thought that "Journalism" means "Newspapers."

Maybe everything moves under the TV umbrella?

I still don't see high school gamers going away. They deliver too much information to the reader they would be lacking if not for the story.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

When's the last time anyone here read a gamer? (For leisure.)

 

[Roscablo]

When's the last time anyone here read a gamer? (For leisure.)

I do sometimes, but usually it's for games I was at or watched -- don't know if that's unusual or not -- and often it's just for some quotes or to see what was said about a specific situation.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

Maybe a site for moms to exchange parenting tips and recipes. Plus, we can have areas where readers debate important political ideas, or jokingly tease one another about sports teams.

Look at Indiana high school basketball. The number of people who care keeps declining.

Indiana's decline is its own damn fault. Hoosier hoops, attendance wise, has been on a steady decline since the decision to class.

Kentucky's got it right. One class. One champion. Big and small together. Established traditional powers and upstarts.

Indiana attendance is on a decline, but Kentucky boys moved the state final to a Sunday (because of Rupp Arena scheduling) last season and drew a huge crowd. Now the state is sticking with it.

 

[I Should Coco]

When's the last time anyone here read a gamer? (For leisure.)

In print? I will read prep/local college gamers, largely because they'll have stuff I can't get elsewhere.

Case in point: I didn't work Saturday, so I read the regional wrestling tourney writeup in today's Podunk Press to see if any of my son's friends/teammates in other sports made it state. I also read the coverage of the state girls BBall tourney.

But I see your point, 3OF ... if you don't have a high-school age kid, or have friends with kids on the teams, not much reason to read the prep sports gamers.

 

[93Devil]

Extra points for basing all views on the line of thought that "Journalism" means "Newspapers."

Maybe everything moves under the TV umbrella?

I still don't see high school gamers going away. They deliver too much information to the reader they would be lacking if not for the story.

How much of it really matters?

ESPN has highlights, we have the result and the box score. High school sports do not matter. Those who care can attend games.

There is some degree of interest between not giving a **** and going to the game, and I think a lot of people fall in that range.

 

[boundforboston]

Preps coverage will be valueable at larger papers. It's called recruiting.

 

[Drip]

I'm not a huge tech guy, but how much square footage are the servers taking up in your shop right now?

Looking at the Richmond Times Dispatch, I could see them going all digital and having the following staff, and this is assuming these people are churning out at least four bylines a week or covering a 4-5 games and doing a feature each week.

Four full time sports writers
Two entertainment writers
One person doing obits and other agate crap
Ten news reporters - split them up as you like
One feature columnist

One editor for sports and entertainment content
One editor for news content
One editor shared between the two
One tech guy to handle servers and website
Three photographers
One general management position the editors report to.
One HR person
One accountant

That's between 2.1 million and 2.5 million in salary.

Can an online newspaper even generate that revenue? That's 50,000 subscribers paying $50 a year. How much are online ads?

If you cutout delivery, you cut out inserts.

In Richmond, that would be suicide. Four reporters in sports? That's too few people for too much work. However, I do get where you're going.

 

[DanOregon]

Scott Hamilton had a good quote in the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding doc about the heavily covered practice session in Lillehammer. "You had Time, next to Sports Illustrated, next to People Magazine next to the National Enquirer, all at the same level. I figured figure skating wouldn't be the same, but I knew journalism had changed forever."

 

[PaperDoll]

I earnestly wonder whether prep sports coverage will exist in 10 years.
Does anyone without participating children really care, and why should they?

In certain areas, prep sports coverage won't die any time soon.

My area being one of them.

Where KYSportsWriter and I work, preps is 90 percent -- maybe higher -- of what we do.

Although we're 40 miles south of Louisville, haven't covered the Kentucky Derby or the pre-week workouts in years. Haven't staffed a U of L home men's basketball or football game in four years. Same for UK 80 miles to the east.

<snip>

Local, local, local. No matter what.

Not that I totally agree with it, but that's what we're told to do.

Aside: I'm surprised you don't localize the Derby... and everything else nearby.

That sounds like my newspaper... before the consolidation. We covered the breadth of high school sports, not just football, basketball, and baseball. Olympic sports were regularly the centerpiece, and girls got just as much coverage as boys.

Now that our sports editor is off-site at a much larger paper, we are far less local -- and our circulation has declined at a much higher rate. The centerpiece is almost never local, unless Big State U counts... which it never did before. There's more pro and college coverage from wires, and no effort is made to highlight our locals in the various schools and leagues.

Our area has a lot of people who grew up here, went away for college, and came right back to settle down as adults so they tend to care more about hyperlocal sports -- and news.

One thing that mostly vanished with the departure of a previous executive editor (way pre-consolidation) is the "person on the street" reaction stories to major local and national news. I got really tired of going to the mall to ask people about supposedly events they hadn't heard of 'til I brought it up, and I don't the news-side folks miss dipping into the file of people from different backgrounds and communities.

Scott Hamilton had a good quote in the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding doc about the heavily covered practice session in Lillehammer. "You had Time, next to Sports Illustrated, next to People Magazine next to the National Enquirer, all at the same level. I figured figure skating wouldn't be the same, but I knew journalism had changed forever."

I wasn't entirely sure how that was meant. Yes, the whole Tonya and Nancy situation stretched far beyond sports. But I still groaned at the thought of Sports Illustrated and The New York Times being though of in the same light as the National Enquirer.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

When's the last time anyone here read a gamer? (For leisure.)

In print? I will read prep/local college gamers, largely because they'll have stuff I can't get elsewhere.

Case in point: I didn't work Saturday, so I read the regional wrestling tourney writeup in today's Podunk Press to see if any of my son's friends/teammates in other sports made it state. I also read the coverage of the state girls BBall tourney.

But I see your point, 3OF ... if you don't have a high-school age kid, or have friends with kids on the teams, not much reason to read the prep sports gamers.

I appreciate that.
I just feel you have to be invested in it on some level to really care.
We've heard plenty about newspapers' place as a civic institution but commitment to community hasn't been moving the product.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I covered Nancy-Tonya as Nancy was our local heroine, and the presence of the tabloid celebrity media helped keep me sane during the ordeal, because of their disdainful attitude towards the Olympics and sports in general made me laugh.
I covered the 100th Harvard-Yale game for the Phoenix in 1983. My seat in the Yale Bowl press box was between Vogue and Women's Wear Daily!!!

 

[Morris816]

When it comes to preps coverage, I think it will be more like this:

Podunk, population 7,500, where Podunk High is what people watch Friday and Saturday nights... yeah, you better focus on preps coverage.

Middleburg, population 25,000, where there's plenty of support for preps but it's not something everybody watches... needs coverage but it may be better to focus on the most popular or successful sports.

Mini-metropolis, population 75,000, where the nearby NFL, MLB and/or NBA team are king and preps has a limited audience... yeah, preps just isn't going to command reader attention, so focus more on box scores and major postseason tournaments.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

PaperDoll,

We didn't use to "localize" the Derby.
We "covered" the Derby.

Had a writer and a photog go up every day of Derby Week. Notebook, feature, column every day (at least). Sunday after the Derby, most of front page, if not all, was Derby. Set two writers and a photog to Derby. Each writer wrote at least four things.

Now we localize sports wise if we have some sort of owner involvement (had two recently). Although we are close to Louisville, we are NOT horse country. Not many stables over here (more on the Bluegrass Parkway toward Lexington).

Used to cover the Kentucky and Louisville men's basketball teams and football teams quite heavily. Every home game for Louisville. Selected away games for Kentucky. Bowl games for both schools. Conference tourney for UK. NCAA Tourney for both.

Although none of those trips have been recent (last 3-4 years), I went to Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Mexico covering UK or UofL. My boss went to Florida, California and Georgia (was in the Georgia Dome when the tornado hit during the SEC Tourney).

Looking back, financially all of that didn't make much sense (or cents) to the bottom line in terms of readership or advertising.