Mlive: Letting parents cost their kids scholarships

From people not directly involved with the games as a player, coach, parent, or significant other of one of the aforementioned?

 

No, I understood it. I'm saying when you write "neither are readers"...if you're basing that conclusion on metrics, I think that's flawed. You can't base it on Internet metrics. You do it that way, you're enslaved to the whims of a fleeting market instead of creating desire and consistency in a market.

Short-term, it might be a nice hit of whatever, knowing you're following audience trends. Long-term, I do not think it'll work. It's a losing-money kind of strategy. I actually don't think its counter-intuitive to think that way; I think presuming Twitter resolves information issues long term for readers is counter-intuitive.

 

Yes, Dick. We get it from a broad spectrum. Sometimes just fans of a particular school in general.

 

New slogan:

"MLive: We used to try just as hard as everyone else."

 

Matt, I think you're getting caught up in irate callers. They are not always an accurate barometer of your readership. They're the outer fringe -- the people who are fanatic about it.

For every one of them, there are 20, 50 who don't like seeing gamers go away, and just don't decide to lambast the paper in a comments section or with a phone call.

 

I see what you're saying. I know a lot of folks disagree, but when folks aren't reading gamers online (though when we live streamed every local prep football game for a season, that actually was really successful) and our in-depth market surveys say our readers aren't very interested in local prep events, we can't afford to send one of our two prep guys to games all of the time when their features are what get read online and print subscribers ask for.

We're only a 25K daily, but in the three years since we stopped doing things because that's how it used to be done, print and digital subscriptions have grown. But again, every market has its own unique challenges.

 

I hear "in-depth market survey," and I begin to hear loud buzzing. I've seen "in-depth market surveys." Not too impressed.

 

That's fair. It took a couple of months to complete and it's worked well for us. Maybe not so much at other places.

 

You think a reduction in preps game coverage directly correlates to growth in print subscriptions? And, further, you're running preps features on Saturday in lieu of coverage?

It's possible. It'd be surprising to me.

I'm not for 800-word prep gamers. I don't believe in those. I'm a big believer in brevity.

I would presume digital subscriptions rose. They've risen everywhere, regardless of how meager those gains might be.

 

I think changing how we did things across all desks, not just sports, helped subscriptions. We still get all of the games in, we just aren't at as many.
In terms of Saturday coverage, we have our lead prep football game as CP in the fall with a "fancy" prep football scoreboard, a CSU feature down page and my column. In the winter, CSU basketball dominates the cover, a prep basketball gamer will be down page. There aren't as many prep events on Fridays in the spring here, so having them front and center on a Saturday isn't a big deal. Plus, we try to avoid gamers as CPs when we can.

Last CSU football season, we started running gamers online only (except for late games) and putting the analysis as the CP. We'd still have all of the information in print. There was a full box, a notebook, my column, a sidebar. But no traditional print gamer. The majority of the CSU football gamer traffic online (posted as soon as clock hit 0:00) came from search engines while the online readers of the analysis were native site users. If it's working well, we're not going to change it too much soon. We did win an APSE triple crown with this approach this year.

 

A question for the Michigan folks: I don't know the A-squared area very well, but I think Grand Rapids is under the M-Live umbrella, and from what I remember, prep sports — especially hoops — were huge in the western part of the state. Those readers might miss the Friday night gamers.

The former sports editor there, Bob Becker, used to be a huge advocate of women's and girls sports, and was highly respected for it. Apparently he didn't let the metrics guide his paper's coverage ...

 

I see a common theme here. Having a Division I athletic program in town certainly helps you downplay the prep coverage.
Not all of us are that fortunate.