Decatur, Illinois sports writer

Good for you. But to argue your prep coverage is better than the Daily Herald, the Northwest Herald, the Peoria Journal Star or the Naperville Sun is pretty laughable. No offense, but you're saying you do a better job than papers that are a lot better than yours. I'm guessing the IPA and APSE agree, judging from the awards every year.

 

Doc,

What I said was one "The H&R is also extremely progressive with its Web presence and has other Central Illinois papers scrambling to keep up." The PJ Star has twice the staff and twice the circulation, and frankly doesn't do that much with the Web and multimedia.

I also contended that the H&R's prep coverage was top tier for under-40,000 circ papers. As for your Chicagoland papers, the Daily Herald is enormous, the NW Herald only covers 20 schools, and from what I read in the Sun online each week (Do they have a Saturday edition?) we stack up.

So yes, I'm serious about the H&R's credibility and its ability to work wonders with a six-person crew. I'm not knocking anyone, but I'll always stand by our work.

 

OK, I must have misread. You were comparing yourselves to the Pantagraph and the N-G (Kankakee doesn't count). You're probably right in that instance.

 

I'll take on the SJ-R, too. Dave Kane, watch out.

 

Careful there, chief. Dave's one tough mutha.

 

Doc,
This whole thing got misconstrued before you commented- so don't take it too hard.

As for comparing the Daily Herald to the Herald & Review...

Well, I've been a stringer for both newspapers-

And I'd have to say that the Daily Herald definitely dominates in the print coverage- bigger area, more schools, and bigger staff. And everyone on staff at the DH does a great job from what I've seen.

However, the H&R has a better web presence. Their blogs and video content adds some great additional coverage. The DH has struggled a bit in that area.

As far as the staff is concerned- I'd agree with Andrew. The people at the H&R are great. I was a stringer there when I was 19-20 years old, and it wasn't long before the guys were asking me to hang out after work, and to join the paper's softball team. Not only do the writers do good work, but they also warm to new writers immediately- even as a lowly stringer, they were more than willing to answer any questions I had. For me, I would say the H&R was the greatest class I took in college and it provided me with some of the best teachers I could ask for.

The paper also has had success lately moving some of its writers on to even better things. I beleive Jay Schwab took a position at the St. Louis Dispatch a few years ago. Todd Adams is the SE at the Aurora Beacon and Andrew is now moving on to the Quad Cities.

 

The resume count has eclipsed 70, according to folks in the know

 

So you're saying he's the tallest midget?

 

I believe the politically correct term is tallest little person. To use midge is just an up-turned middle finger. Way to put a turd in the punch bowl.


There we go, got all the JS one-liners out of the way.

 

Did you give me a good palm to the elbow too?

 

No I did not you steaming pile of BBAM. (forgot that one earlier, which is sad because it's still my favorite)

 

This has been filled. Justin Conn is moving over from the Galesburg Register-Mail.