Greeley (Co.) Tribune lays off sports department

A little hard to follow the story here, but seems like Greeley laid off its two-person sports department in a city of 100,000 with a D1 university and a whole bunch of high schools.



The publisher gets pretty defensive on Twitter:





Apparently there's a plan to hire one person to replace the two veterans (long-time veterans) laid off. So, good news! A new position!!



He'll explain more first chance he gets:

 

The inability to effectively explain what's happening to readers is not a good look for a publisher.

 

Really weird Twitter conversation there, IMO.

First, it seems pretty unacceptable to me to not have a column ready to go explaining the changes.

Second, if you don't have that column ready, what the hell are you doing on Twitter arguing with people?

 

Uh isn't that what the two guys you just kicked to the curb were doing?

I smell an age-discrimination suit coming ...

 

I wonder if they could afford to keep the two sports reporters if they laid off the publisher instead. Most useless job at any newspaper.

 

Agreed on Louis. I remember him in Bakersfield.

Crowdsourcing sports? We all know what that means:

1) "Greeley High may have lost, but they tried really hard and all their parents are proud of them."
Or.
2) "Greeley High would have won, but the refs screwed us."

 

I think it’ll mean gamers written entirely from MaxPreps stats. Elsewhere he cites MaxPreps and the state’s athletics association website as the primary competition, and mentions they get their info via crowdsourcing.

What I actually assume he’s saying is they won’t staff games at all, home or away, and will watch twitter or MaxPreps to get scores and maybe a few stat lines. Not sure if that will actually be turned into a crappy form story or just plugged into a scoreboard element.

They then may have 1-2 sports features a week.

They’re basically saying sports reporting as we know it is a waste of time and resources. All people want are scores and the occasional feel-good feature.

 

Is this publisher guy drunk? High? Both? I can’t understand his jumbled word salad twitter rant. Are the lights on? Is anybody home?

 

Perceptive Fredrick will tell you what is finally happening. The suits who have always undervalued sports in these smaller shops (most big city news organizations have some suits who know sports have a following) think anybody can write profiles on athletes. So the news reporters will do a feature here and there where applicable. It doesn't surprise Fredrick that as we move along, sports in some shops will be totally eliminated. For a city this big and with lots of sports to cover, this decision is ridiculously short sighted and stupid and unprofitable but also appalling. Sports has long been considered the toy factory. A news writer doesn't want to be any where near the Greeley newsroom after this.

p.s. if the Greeley suits think they are going to be able to write anything off twitter and max preps they are mistaken. Good luck getting anything more than a score or a comment on a game. If you are relying on that, one big LOL. Also what poor individual will be in charge of trying to find such information and writing it up? Trying to get reliable information without paying someone to track it down is a recipe for disaster. It won't work, Greeley. Good luck organizing this and trying to fill your pages with content.
Somebody will be pulling her/his hair out trying to locate the "crowd sourcing" scores you will be looking for.

 

The only reason I am glad Randy Bangert is no longer with us is that this would break his heart.

Losing Nate Miller is also a big blow. Cannot speak of the others ... it has been too long ago.

This publisher is out of his mind. People around there care about their local sports, and they certainly care about goings-on with the University of Northern Colorado ... better known as UNC in that corner of the world. Matt Schuman did a good job covering the school before dying a few years ago far too young.

The odds of any legitimate objectivity occurring with "crowd sourcing" stories are staggering. They do not replace good sports writing and reporting. A section is much more than a bunch of fluffy evergreen features about young athletes.

There is no way Randy would have gone along with this. He cared too much about the industry, the people in Weld County and Greeley and the way in which stories were processed and presented to readers and to the public.

To understate this just a smidge, a massive mistake is being made here.