Gannett, Gatehouse talking merger

Why would any newspaper with a college get rid of its sports editor? They think a sustainable model to make any money involves no coverage of local sports? Is the sports editor just on furlough or actually fired?

 

That depends on the college. If it's a small school, with little to no sports program, then ditching the sports editor makes sense.

 

But that still leaves the high schools without coverage.

 

We’re learning very quickly that sports aren’t real

 

The suits at the newspaper in that city and the parent company apparently give no value to sports selling newspapers at all. If they have a local college and it is halfway competitive, a significant amount of readers want to hear about the college football and basketball and any specialty sports that they excel in. I know many many suits have been jealous of sports (the writers get to travel) and the toy department reputation of it, but if a newspaper in a college town eliminates the sports editor position, good luck. The university website should pick up on that, let everrybody know they are the only source of news, hire some kid to cover the teams and get some advertisers. Nobody in a college town is going to care at all about a newspaper that doesn't cover the college.

 

Fortunately in this day and age, newspapers have paid obituaries to tide them over.

 

I spent 15 years in Norwich. Ten years ago we had a sports staff of six. Now it’s one. The executive editor was just laid off last week (he had spent almost 30 years there in different roles) and was replaced by the current Newport EE, who I guess is going to split time between the two - despite there being about 75 minutes between the two places.

 

Do the Navigators get a lot of coverage? Did the paper send a writer to away games? And what about the Red Sox? Once sports resumes, what do you think the top priorities for the lone sports staffer will be?

 

There's actually far fewer of those running, at least for our shop.

Many funerals/memorial services are being postponed until later this summer, in hopes the social distancing rules will be lifted by then and large groups can gather. So for quite a few people, a short death notice runs now, and the longer obit probably will run when they have the service.

 

I think the obituary business is disappearing for newspapers. When my Dad died in 2014 my Mom wanted a Denver Post obituary so we spent a couple of hundred dollars for an ad. We received one phone call as a result.

When she died we skipped the ad.

 

I think they run a feature every now and again written by a stringer. Certainly no game coverage - its deadline is around first pitch. There hasn’t been a writer go to away games since probably 2005. Red Sox haven’t been covered since the late 80s. Our coverage area once allowed us to cover 28 high schools and five colleges, including UConn. Now it’s four core high schools and no colleges.

 

I think people also are getting hip to how newspapers are gouging the deceased's loved ones on the prices of obits. Really unconscionable, IMO, for relatively low-impact newspaper obits to cost $600-$1,000 in a small-sized paper, and grieving people fork it over so it is one less thing to worry about.

I think the online obits through the funeral homes are much more reasonably priced, give a bigger audience and are packaged with the memorial, visitation and funeral service as a whole package deal.