Four Kentucky papers (run by Boone) cut sports sections on same day

The sports departments at the the Advocate-Messenger, Jessamine Journal, Interior Journal and Winchester Sun were eliminated. All are owned by the same company, Boone Newspapers, Inc.

Four Central Kentucky newspapers eliminate sports departments

 

He teed that one up right nice.

 

Awful. Just awful.

 

I can see the headlines now: "Podunk High screwed by refs again."

 

We're back to citizen journalism? OMG. Good luck to anybody working at those newspapers. They will soon find out how important the toy department was (is). So sports departments are now getting replaced. And some of you think I'm hard on decision makers (suits)? Cmon folks. Names make news especially in small towns and we've been through this citizen journalism thing before. No parents are going to keep accurate stats. I take that back. Some parent will keep accurate stats, others will get game scores wrong and so many things wrong. And suits thought their sports writers sometimes made things difficult on editors regarding box scores, etc. Good luck getting citizen journalists to do the job. In what world is having no sports staff in a small to medium sized town a good idea?

And this notion that MaxPreps is doing a good job and newspapers no longer should cover high school sports is an insult. Cmon. Everytime I've looked something up on MaxPreps I've been severely disappointed. This is one big LOL and inexcusable. Just another example of the higher-ups taking sports writers and coverage for granted. Oh, they'll find out soon what a bad decision this was. Wait til the parents bring in pictures and "recaps." They'll be accurate? Oh sure they will. And you run some high school games and not others? What if Junior has 30 in one game and in the blurb a parent brought in Junior only had 2 that game? LOLLLLLLLLLL. Sad.

 

In Fredrickspeak. the suits just cost the kids scholarships.

 

I just get upset because the initial reason for newspapers, the facts names make news in communities, is still viable no matter what the hedge fund suits say. Or those out to please the hedge funders who want staff cuts and profits. Sure the high school articles don't get the page views but I'm still not convinced page views are leading to revenues for community newspapers.

 

The local schools should pick up a recovering journalist, have him teach a couple of English and/or Journalism classes, and start their own sports desks/SID offices.

 

One of my former co-workers who had been at the newspaper for around 30 years took a buyout, then almost immediately moved into a job with our local D1 school's SID office. I don't know if he went looking or if the school approached him, but it's a great situation for him now.

 

When was your last day off?

 

I have no problem with an editor/publisher/"suit" saying, 'You know what, we had to make some tough choices and we can no longer justify these sports positions." I might even agree with him that in the grand scheme of journalism coverage of youth and high school sports will not make or break our democracy.

But trying to dress it up with all this silliness is what I can't abide. Why not just level with readers and be honest instead of all the absurd talking points?

 

Any indication if this is a chain-wide move or just this one cluster in Kentucky?