Preps Under Attack

Hell, a lot of HS sections were dreamy when the suits allocated priority to it. Our fans could spend two hours on our Saturday live HS football section.

 

IMO, preps coverage is the one place where a newspaper is indispensable.

In Indianapolis, where I live, I can get all kinds of coverage of the Pacers, Colts, IMS, IU, Purdue, Butler, et al, without ever opening a copy of the Indianapolis Star. I can read Bob Kravitz's columns at a TV station website, Mike Chappell's outstanding Colts coverage at another TV site. There are tons of blogs and fan sites of varying quality, some of whom employ journos, some of who don't. Of course, the teams themselves provide (biased) coverage, too.

Preps is a two-edged sword. It's small enough that you're not going to have *any* other coverage, but also very hyperlocal. Our local school is a BIG deal in our community, but people 10 miles away won't care. A small community daily should focus on sports coverage - it's the one thing that can sustain - but good preps coverage that casts a wide net on a Friday during football or hoops season can also keep people reading the metro. It's the one thing we do that readers can't really get anywhere else.

 

An entire publication? No.

A sports section? It's enticing, and the way a lot of papers are going, or at least it seems to be. Preps are cheap to cover and cheap to staff. So many people would cut off their ears to get a full-time sports writing job that you have no shortage of eager beavers you can hire for $20K a year to do the job.

As a career maneuver, I had to jump ship quick when my first shop started de-emphasizing pro and college coverage. As an astute business observer, I totally got it. Hell, get rid of the sports section all together. Run a page of agate and some briefs and fold it into the local section.

Now, as a sports fan and news consumer, with kids who aren't in high school yet, I pay virtually zero attention to the local sports scene. I go to the local high school's football games with my son and I keep an eye on how my own high school is doing, but other than that, I have almost no idea. And I covered this stuff for six years. I cannot imagine that in urban or suburban areas preps is much more than a tiny, tiny, tiny niche market.

 

I also think it should be noted that gambling drives spectator sports interest probably more than at any time in recent decades. Preps doesn't sell local newspapers, but neither does cursory pro and college coverage. I can't even read the Chicago Tribune and get the information I need to properly tinker with my fantasy rosters. People, especially young people and middle-age people raising kids, don't have the time or the attention span to block off three consistent hours - other than perhaps for the NFL - in something they don't have a competitive interest of some kind of skin in.

 

We're prep centric. One of our affiliates in the chain does pro's but they're low on the food chain, non-factor on the beats. Still, when we have ideas for special sections or promotion, the ad people come back unable to sell 'em. When it comes time to sell a go team go section for the pro's, the ads fly out.

I've always thought the prep coverage was superior and worthwhile, thinking if you can't own the beat why waste resources parroting the metro's that do? But it doesn't bring in the bucks.

 

I was looking through archives of my hometown's paper from 30 or so years ago, when I covered preps. We covered probably 10 games every Friday night, and had a graf and agate on 70 or so schools across 25 counties. I was stunned at the depth of the coverage -- and can't imagine now who the hell was reading all of it. Loved being a part of it, but I agree that the ROI is probably minuscule (and the pageview numbers don't lie.)

 

People just don't care about it very much. They cared about it 50 years ago when entertainment options were more limited. Now there are 300 cable television channels and an endless number of apps, games, and websites to keep people occupied. Preps is a cheap night out when you have a kid, and it's great for participants. But as something newsworthy, in general, its time has long passed.

 

There are pockets where you can still operate an entire newspaper on just local sports ads. My weekly paper still does. All our revenue comes from local businesses buying ads so the area basketball game photos and recaps are in the paper. We'll have 40 ads in the sports section and five in the news section.

But I live in a time warp. It's still 1964 here. And we're a just a couple years away from all our readers dying off.

 

Preps is just the first domino, too. I have serious questions about how viable pro and college spectator sports will remain as the decades progress. Watching other people do stuff seems unsustainable as a long-term business model. It's a big reason gambling is going to end up being legalized.

 

As noted, the Dallas Morning News might have been the best. But there wasn't a Florida newspaper back in the day that didn't cover the hell out of preps. We often devoted three open pages to Friday night coverage (which also included other fall sports) during football season and then zoned the pages by county.

The lament on the copy desk at my shop in the late '80s and '90s was always, "This would be such a great job if it weren't for high schools." Then again, if not for voluminous coverage of preps that required editing manpower, some of our jobs might not have existed.

 

I know we have twitter now, but for a beginning journalist, covering preps on deadline for a daily was the best training I ever got. When it came to writing features where I had a few days - that took adjusting to.

 

You used to go to the paper for info on fantasy sports? First year we had a fantasy baseball league we did that, but only because we got our stats and standings mailed weekly from a state service, can't even remember the name of the place.