Greeley (Co.) Tribune lays off sports department

Which is, of course, complete bullshit. So glad I don’t work for such an idiot.

For someone to think that they can lay off the entire sports staff — with loads of institutional knowledge and connections in the local sports community — and simply have news people take over and not miss a beat is beyond absurd. We have some of the most talented, capable, hard working non-sports people in our newsroom, but they wouldn’t have a damn clue what to do or who to call if they were suddenly asked to go find a worthwhile sports feature.

 

Everyone in a sports department of course knows this, but it’s worth reiterating that most widely read sports stories come from reporters who’ve invested time developing sources on the beat.

I wrote a sports piece last year that was one of the five most-read stories (viewed almost a million times) on our website in 2018. There’s zero chance I would’ve had it if I were a news writer parachuting in on occasion. You need to invest the time to get the big payoff.

 

As we say around here, this will not end well. Maxpreps works for "Joe Schmoe scored 15 points as Podunk defeated Cowtown 55-53 last night," but what if three of those came on a buzzer beater? You don't get that from a Maxpreps linescore. I could go on with more examples, but why?

As for those leaving, hope they take one out of the page of those who suffered similar fates in Long Beach and Modesto and launch their own website. Hate to see all that go to waste.

 

Yeah, I'm afraid a lot more will embrace this idea. The Denver Post is dipping its toe in this water, too, at least to some degree. Obviously the Post isn't without sports reporters, but they've recently (I think?) started running autonomously generated stories at least online: These are for playoff games, fwiw.

Pikes Peak Christian fends off Sanford, 28-6 – The Denver Post

I did smile a little that there's a "Subscribe" link in the middle of a story like that.

It doesn't always work even that well:

Sedgwick County defeats Merino, 54-0 – The Denver Post

Maybe this has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere and I just missed it, but I think this ties pretty closely with the Greeley news and it's an, uh, interesting trend to me. It's worth noting these are both 8-man "gamers," but I wonder how much less traffic they generate than a good 20-inch gamer from the same event? I'm afraid the difference would be small.

 

True, but that kind of thinking obviously misses the point. Yes, most gamers don’t generate heavy traffic. But as we tell our non-sports people, you miss a ton by not having a reporter cover games.

You miss out on that occasional story that blows up when police arrest someone at the game with a gun or because the game was canceled due to a stadium-wide brawl (both happened here this last football season). You don’t get to properly detail how exactly Johnny broke the single game state passing record and you miss out on building those relationships with coaches and players who absolutely recognize whether you’re there or not.

Equally important: It’s difficult to build any kind of credibility with your audience or write with any kind of real authority about people and teams that you simply have not watched. Readers notice these things and it gives them one less reason to subscribe at a time when it’s absolutely critical that publications find ways to add new subscribers.

 

Everything said here is true, and I feel bad for the people let go, but I find it hard to muster much outrage. Why? Because the Greeley Tribune and most papers of its ilk won't exist in five years; the sports department is just vanishing a little earlier than everybody else.

 

This is definitely part of an unfortunate trend. My old shop decided, at the whim of the publisher (well, the whim of the kid of the real publisher, who dubbed his idiot son "publisher" and gifted him a mid-six-figure salary) to drop sports and go with crowd-sourced shit. That stream trickled at first, but quickly dried up. People don't want to read that and even fewer want to produce it. It's been nearly 18 months and they still have no sports, but their bottom-line gain in terms of salaries and benefits removed from the roles by lopping sports was, in their eyes, worth it.

People who run newspapers continue to have no idea how difficult it is to produce a newspaper. This is contributing to their downfall as much as anything. My dad, who was in the biz in the early 1960s, told me long ago, "There's no such thing as a poor publisher. A lot of dumb ones, but no poor ones." He, to my knowledge, has not yet been proven wrong.

 

Here's the op-ed - Bryce Jacobson: Greeley Tribune to open new chapter in the way we cover sports | Greeley Tribune

 

Good God.

 

I stopped reading at "better serve our readers," because that is 0 percent what he is talking about.

"Better serve our bottom line" would at least be honest.

 

I did like the note at the bottom. "Subscribe you sons of bitches."

 

"Innovative approach"? Is that the phrase the kids now use for "we're cheap"?

A load of crap. The features and other things sought in this format come from reporters and writers actually covering games and, you know, being there.

Someone who comes in and cherrypicks a piece with a couple of phone calls is NOT the same as trend pieces, profiles and features that come from consistently being there, establishing a regular presence and, from that point, knowing what questions work and what do not with certain coaches and players based on results, trends and individual personalities.

You think this "innovative approach" is going to improve on this tried-and-true formula?

We won't tell you, the beancounters, how you consistently fail to sell ads and fail to monetize the internet. Please don't tell us how journalism works.