Finding reasons not to do a story

100 percent this. We have a handful of local players who have gone on to play in MLB, and we run stories and photos of them every chance we get. People remember these kids, and we do these type of features all the time and they're well read.

Yes, that's a bit naive, but it's not your problem. Tough shit.

 

In fact, we also for many years would run minor-league stats for all the players from our coverage area. Readers eat this stuff up. I'm pretty jaded and cynical from many years in this business, but I always enjoy seeing how kids from our area are doing in college/minors/pros.

 

Same here. We do it every week during college football season and it's one of my favorite things to do.
We've also had several minor league baseball players over the years and try to do big update features on them during the summer. One guy spent about seven years in the minors, topping out at AAA. It became a running joke between us that our phone interview was a July 4 tradition, because for about five years I used his story to anchor that holiday section.

 

The only way you can go wrong with stories like these, is to NOT do them.

Or, like I did once, when doing a mass update of "locals on the next level", forget to include one. Her parents were great. It was hearing from fans from other schools in the coverage area that surprised me. Still, it showed me that readers eat up this stuff.

 

smallpotatoes, your photo editor doesn't know what drives traffic. Anyone who grew up -- or was even born -- here is local forever, and the newspaper should follow for as long as possible. But don't take our word for it; show him the analytics.

One of the first stories I wrote at my first job was on an Olympic fencer whose family had relocated before he could walk. He was claimed by five newspapers by the end: two for childhood, college, grad school, current residence. It became almost joke to him, but he (or his family) still had connections at every stop.

We have a weekly college roundup full of alumni. It's painfully boring to compile and to read: "Podunk grad Joe Smith scored five goals as Out-of-StateU defeated Non-Conference-Opponent, 6-2, on Tuesday." It can go on like that for 40+ inches every week, every in-season varsity sport. But if we leave anyone out, we're almost guaranteed to hear from a parent. They don't even like it when their precious baby is only online and not in print.

Since the college kiddies are already tweeting about their games, the roundup might have to start earlier than usual.

 

I didn't have enough space to do weekly updates. I did preseason, mid-year and after, so it wasn't as tedious.

 

There is still a market for print obviously.

 

Shit, we claim a US national soccer team kid who moved away from here when he was 2. We don't make a big deal of it, but we always mention that he is a native of our city. Same goes for PGA players, WTA, whatever. Localizing ANYTHING is ALWAYS a good idea.

 

As I said, too, looking for a reason to not do something is not going to make the product better. If you look hard enough, you'll always find a reason not to do something.

 

Competent photo editor is worried about how long the transmissiony thingy in his Neon will last, so a long trip is out of the question.
But seriously, like others have said, it's not the photo editor's call. While I can certainly understand his concern about bosses realizing cuts to the photo department could be made, on the other hand trying to get a story killed could get him canned if bosses feel he's not a good team player.

 

Instead of hanging around the office working your corners, maybe he could go out and photograph something.

 

Yes, exactly.

We have a couple kids in the minors right now, and all summer on our agate page we would run their teams' scores and a little blurb on what each player did (and sometimes the standings if we had room).

If they did something notable, we'd bust out a separate story. In fact, one of the kids had a huge homer in a postseason game tonight. I gave him a quick call, got some quotes and wrote a little 10-graf story. Not that you can judge everything by social media, but these stories always get lots of shares and likes, which to me is a decent indicator that people care about them.