Toledo Blade

Wasn't Stacy helping cover news as well? Goodbye, enterprise on non-tOSU football teams, BlueJackets and MLS.

 

Rusty Miller was the best.

 

Again, what I suspect will happen is, 5 years from now, after the Blade has driven out all of its best people, it'll have mercy on the idea of covering these beats again. This is a way to drive out folks through the "yeah, we're going to prioritize our beats like shit, and you can kiss our ass and like it or have enough dignity to leave" approach.

 

They're trying to break the union. That's always been the Block's goal. Then hire in staff for probably less than half the wage they're paying now. And yet the staff is pretty small already..

 

Yeah, it was at least billed that way when he took over Rusty. I don't remember many AP state news items with Mitch's name on them. He may have been helping do things in the Columbus bureau though.

 

For those wondering about AP's college basketball changes this year. This went out to writers before the start of the season and was relayed to me when I had questions when a non-conference game wasn't staffed that we were waiting for:
WHY ARE WE MAKING THE CHANGE?
A deep look at last year’s metrics, including downloads in AP Newsroom, print play and online coverage, indicated that the writethrus of these unranked games are among AP Sports’ least used stories. Most members and customers – including the global online customers – use the short version without quotes. The time and money spent covering these games at 600-800 words does not match up with how customers value that coverage.
We aren’t doing this because the games aren’t important to some people or because college basketball is less important. The issue is about resources spent vs. the value to our members and customers. We are covering hundreds of games at 700 words, when nearly all customers just want the short version of the game results. We don’t have demand for what we are producing.

 

I see it. Like so many other things, it depends on the market.

I've lived in a spot or two where almost no one cared about BKC. I've also lived in a couple of spots where BKC coverage was everything.

AP knows this. So many a lot of people in the business ... and if they don't know, learning is always a good idea.

 

It's also obvious that AP isn't shooting as many games, either. For those of us at smaller papers, you'll look for photos -- from Pac-12 or other major conferences -- and most will have the dreaded orange triangle, meaning they cost $35 to download because AP didn't shoot them.

Last I checked, the annual membership AP charges newspapers wasn't decreasing. But what they provide sure is.

 

In that sense, the pandemic has actually been a godsend. The SEC and some individual schools have a media portal now where you can download pool photos from the school photographers, plus the postgame Zoom pressers. The quality is usually good, even if there have been some games where they didn't move any. If they had it before this season, they've made it much more widely available now.

 

That's a good trend. I've noticed that for smaller schools (think Big Sky conference), and while the quality of the photos varies greatly, sometimes you can scroll through those and find a player from your area.

Much more likely than finding an AP photo of individual players at a mid-major school.

 

I freelanced for The Blade years ago. They used to staff every home and away game for Toledo and I caught an away game.

Seemed like a good shop with a deep commitment to coverage.

But like everywhere, commitment is running into reality.

As for the AP, my local bureau has two staffers for the entire state. One is day sup. for a three-state region, the other is statehouse.

If you turn on the time machine, 15 years ago that same bureau had a staff of 10-ish, plus a healthy group of freelancers, me among them.

Take it back to the 90s when a certain president was from here and the bureau staff was in the 20s with a broadcast piece.

Automation has ended things like the crap desk and Clinton is long gone, but it is still remarkable.

Maybe I'm a little biased, as my dad also did AP work, but its wasting away is the most under-reported story in media.

 

Taking this back to The Blade ...

I do feel all 4 colleges should continued to be staffed, but preps is an important aspect as well and a college writer shouldn't feel it's demeaning to cover preps to help the overall product. Or is being a team player an old notion that is shunned now?