DFM bloodletting continues

I ask as a subscriber and because I am interested in newspapers.

My understanding is that high school sports will be a corollary responsibility of someone who is assisting on Major League baseball coverage. It makes a vast amount of sense to do this. Interest in the Rockies in Colorado is multiplies of the interest in high school sports.

But that means that the Denver Post will not have a full-time staffer on preps. If the Rockies advance in the playoffs how does the Post cover high school football and still cover the other professional teams come October?

I believe you are on the cutting edge of sports journalism management. If publishing revenues continue to decline editors all over the country will face these dilemmas.

 

Dean knows about killing newspapers.

 

Interesting article. The daily circulation at the Post has gone from 400K after the News closed to less than 100K today.

 

Nothing in this situation is remotely ideal and none of us here like it. At my previous shop, I shifted our preps focus away from gamers outside of Friday night football and playoffs (and crosstown rivalry games in other sports, but there were only four high schools compared to a major metro area's worth), instead focusing prep efforts on features and enterprise. And then we try to go all-out for playoffs, leaving readers, coaches, players, etc. with a good taste in their mouth and remembering how we finished vs. how we started.

If we're judging in web traffic and unique visitors, that switch paid off, and we continued that approach at The Post, plus the live video broadcasts of prep football on Facebook live and live radio streaming of other sports Kyle Newman was passionate about doing and wanted to do. We've had to cut back our Post Preps Radio efforts, unfortunately, given staffing issues and since basketball playoffs/state wrestling, I'm not sure Kyle has covered any games to write them up live, but has been at some working on bigger enterprise packages and just to have a friendly face from the Post around to network and say "we haven't forgotten about you." From an outside perspective, I'm sure it has looked like we forgot about them, but when a goal right now is to grow digital subscriptions, I'm not sure covering prep games is the right approach when you have one preps reporter; I'd rather focus his preps efforts on trends and investigations. There are a lot of great preps stories out there, and given staff constraints, I need to have reporters focused on those stories that reach the widest audience. (Stories such as this about the US Soccer Development Academy killing high school soccer in Colorado, or how the Denver Broncos saved football at Denver Public Schools.)

Now what's going to happen come September and the Rockies are in a playoff hunt and prep football is underway? I honestly don't know. Maybe we'll be under new ownership and we'll be able to hire some new bodies. Kyle is a promising young reporter and this served as an opportunity to see how he could handle a pro beat by assisting a vet, and so far, he's done a great job. (Some of us gripe about our reporters being hired by The Athletic, but as editors, if we're not working to help our reporters improve, what are doing? Yeah, replacing good people is a pain in the butt, but isn't it a compliment to the work we've done -- and obviously to the reporter, too -- that they're ready for taking the next steps in their careers? I'm all for opportunities for professional development.)

I'm also not 100 percent sure what our NBA, NHL and colleges coverage will look like next season. I'm the assigning editor for those beats and have some ideas in mind about how I want to adjust those. That'll probably mean me needing to jump in with more features (like I did writing about Jared Bednar during the Avs' playoff run) or diving deep into more investigations. It means a lot more work for me, but those are my areas of strength, and it can ease the load on our reporters, who work way too hard because these are beats that should have more than one person on them.

As bad as it sounds, with so many changes happening right now (and even last week when I was on vacation), we're constantly trying to make it to tomorrow the best we can. I don't like having a 6-8 page daily sports section in print when that's still where the majority of revenue comes from, but it's also not my choice. I don't think the folks up in Fort Collins like having a four-page daily sports section, either, but know their hands are tied. We want a better product out there just as bad as the reader does. It's just hard to improve when all you see around you is fewer bodies by the week.

 

My favorite Lean Dean story:
When he bought the newspaper where I worked, he was there one day, wandering around the building by himself, checking out things. Most of the staff didn't know who he was -- knew the name, but not the person. He walked into the break room. There was a women looking at the vending machine. He came up to her and asked, "How's the menu here?" Without looking back at him, the woman said, "It's crap, just like everything else in this building."

 

You don't cover high school at all in the new era. Specialty websites will give it a shot maybe.

 

Tony Ridder gets a face, too. Make it a two-headed monster.

 

I generally agree with this,

But there is no way that both the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post would have survived the great recession of 2009. Scripps could have held on. I think that they knew Singleton was close to bankruptcy. But if Scripps had held on and kept the RMN open the Post would have closed when Singleton declared bankruptcy.

 

DFM puts up paywall in Southern California

OC Register to charge for unlimited access to digital news to help support local journalism – Orange County Register

 

Paywalls were laughed at, unheard of, years ago. "Nobody will pay for news on the free internet." The fact newspapers went to charging a few years ago is/was ridiculous. Too late. Nobody's willing to pay for the fishrag. Or advertise with the electronic fishrag.