Toledo Blade

Nope. He was on the other side of the state.

 

And if the Michigan and Ohio AP are anything like the AP in our state, it'll be shitty coverage they can get from every other online service. I've noticed more than a few AP college basketball gamers from SEC games this season that looked like automated briefs. My publisher has been asking if we have alternatives or workarounds to the AP and I'm having a harder and harder time justifying keeping it.

 

If your school(s) are not AP Top 25 - or are facing a Top 25 program on that given night - your odds of getting basically an automated brief spikes.

 

Sure seems that way. It wasn't long ago, though (like last season) that they'd staff every Power 5 game. When I'm having to take the stem of their brief, add a sprinkle of detail or notes from the school's release, and watch a 10-minute press conference on YouTube for a relevant quote or three, it defeats one of the major purposes of having a wire service.

 

True. But AP is tightening its belt. Desks are getting leaner. Writers are already going flat-out ... and some still got cut (the Triangle area of North Carolina lost one involuntarily in the last couple of years). Then paper and digital outlets are looking to go cheaper and cheaper on AP packages because hyperlocal or whatever the stupid buzzword du jour is. AP can't keep up staffing with fewer outlets paying and many others trying to aim for cheaper deals.

In summary ... their issues are similar to those of print outlets. Can't provide more coverage with fewer people on desks and boots on the ground. And obviously cannot due more with less.

 

We're forgetting the Marathon Classic LPGA tourney. Formerly the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic, and the second-greatest brief headline I ever wrote, after the champion won by a nice cushion: "(Player) finishes Farr in front of everyone else."

 

I'll bite. What was your greatest brief headline?

 

NBA preseason game between Minnesota and the Lakers in England: "Howuul! T'wolves win in London."

 

And thus the vicious circle begins. AP can't provide quality content because more papers are dropping it, while more papers are dropping it because AP is not or cannot provide the same content it once did.
To bring it back to Toledo and other papers like it, the strange part is that all of these bigger papers and chains don't seem to realize that. They think they can replace their staff writers with wire copy that offers very little to readers or the staff.

 

Well, I thought it interesting -- and unusual -- that a journalist in the midst of experiencing such cutbacks/changes would take to social media in such a public, blatant way, telling readers what to do about a situation, UNLESS his immediate supervisors, perhaps, actually agreed with him and possibly even suggested that that should be done in order to try to gauge/impact public opinion and affect a change. Usually, impacted reporters are afraid to do so, or under orders or a non-disclosure agreement, etc., not to do so. I knew nothing of The Blade's past history and was not taking a side.

There are very few individual journalists whom I actually follow regularly anymore.

 

As one might expect, the AP in Ohio has undergone many changes in the past three or four years. When Rusty Miller (the AP's sports guy in Columbus) retired a couple of years ago AP's Ohio State coverage dropped off a cliff. The Buckeyes still get run from Ralph Russo nationally but when Mitch Stacy took over the beat from Miller there was a big drop off. Now, Stacy also covers the Cincinnati market after Joe Kay's retirement in addition to his duties in Columbus.
Most papers in the state Gannett/Gatehouse, AIM Media use their own OSU football and basketball beat writers from their chain to share content. As a standalone paper, The Blade, doesn't have that luxury.
When I was an SE in Ohio I always thought we were very fortunate to have true pros like Miller, Kay and Tom Withers in Cleveland in the state. Now, AP is just a shell of itself in Ohio and elsewhere too.

 

Similar setup in our state. A good AP writer left, and the biggest paper in the state is owned by Gannett and is not interested in sharing anything with anybody. Even calling them about a simple swap of high school football gamers is like asking for their first born.

There are a bunch of smaller papers in the state, a mix of family-owned and small chains. We all seem to have a good working relationship with the others when it comes to the old "hey, can you send me a story on Friday?" phone calls, so we've had some internal discussions at our shop about reaching out to them to see if we can create some sort of statewide network that circumvents AP. One chain might have a paper that covers SEC School A, another might have one that covers Conference USA School B, a third might be able to pitch in some good news content.
The hard part is figuring out who can offer what, and how to pull it all together in a reliable and accessible way that doesn't further strain everyone's limited resources.