How did `your' newspaper cover and play the NCAA men's basketball tournament championship game

Did your paper -- the one you work for or subscribe to -- staff the Final Four/championship game? Does it usually. Did it put it atop the cover of its sports section? If not, did it play on the cover? What topped it instead?

What I'm most interested in is how coverage decisions have changed with newspapers generating less revenue and how often a major event -- one of the biggest of the year -- is topped by a local event in play.

The metropolitan daily in the city I long lived in -- and worked for until getting a better-paying job -- staffed it, played it atop the cover of its sports section with a six-column headline.

 

Nothing.

Latest McClatchy deadline is 10 p.m. ET. 25 of the 29 papers' deadlines are before 9 p.m. ET.

 

I’ve seen maybe two copies of my metropolitan no-longer-a-daily since they axed my department nearly six years ago. But I assure you they didn’t make any effort to play it up in today’s edition, which was the first since the game happened.

 

The game happened after our deadline, but we put the folo on our cover for the next day.

 

The image I saved was too big to upload as a file, but the link goes to the front page of the Waco Tribune-Herald. That was an interesting photo choice.

WTH-4-6-2021

 

And the sports front from the Waco Tribune-Herald.

4-6-2021-B1

 

What kind of coverage was there in Wednesday's paper? Where was the equivalent of the game story played?

Without giving away where the paper is located, how do you fill sections? How many pages do you have on average? I imagine that varies some day-to-day.

 

Why don't newspapers return to afternoon distribution? I know that 40-50 years ago the afternoon dailies shut down. But that was at a time when the newsroom and the printing plant had to be contiguous.

Now that plants are often 100-200 miles away why not go back to afternoon distribution so that a paper is not embarrassed by their front page.

 

Because kids would have to miss soccer practice to deliver it.

 

I think some papers will eventually return to the PM model. Especially in areas that don't have crushing traffic.

The longest one-way drive I could find, after a very brief search, is the Jackson, Tennessee paper is printed in Jackson, Mississippi, which is 290 miles away. The Mississippi press also prints the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, which is 210 miles away.

San Antonio is printed in Houston, 197 miles, the KC Star is printed in Des Moines, 196 miles, and Nashville is printed in Knoxville, 180 miles.

What's really interesting, to me, is when I got in the business, every daily paper in my state had a printing press. Most of the weeklies also had presses.

Press cost was the barrier to entry and a money-maker for the owners as they could print outside jobs. Which, umm, used to be a thing.

There's now, maybe, four printing presses in the entire state and in the region, I can think of eight off the top of my head, The buzz is always about newsroom reductions but press workers have almost entirely been wiped out.

 

I think the Jackson to Jackson haul at 290 miles is the longest I have read about.

But I know Gannett just moved Palm Springs to Phoenix, which is 280 miles. Gannett also owns Ventura. Does Ventura print in Phoenix? That is a distance of 453 miles.

I used to hang around the Denver Post circa 1974. It was explained to me that with the technology of the day the paper had to basically be produced on-site, given the deadline pressures. But no more.

That is why I think the number of newspapers in this country will decline to 100 or so. Papers are consolidating printing at such a rapid rate that only a few plants will be left. And once the physical product is printed at the same place it is cheaper to combine the websites and produce a single editorial product.