10 p.m. deadlines?

Our paper just killed sports. CST deadlines of 10:15. Yes, 10:15 p.m.

How the hell many high school football games are done by 10:
Basketball?
Major college games?

We killed boxscores on MLB because why the hell would you just want east coast boxes?

We were a regional paper...now we're nothing but a community rag that's going to half-ass that approach.

I pray for the calls to start flooding in. I'll hit the transfer button every time, and so will my department boss.

 

Wow. What was the rationale behind that move?

 

Believe it or not...we're not finding quality carriers and losing the ones we have. So they think by earlier delivery hours, they can retain people. News is also going even earlier, which gives everyone a comfy 11-7 job except sports. And then by our limitations we're going to piss everyone off.

 

With those times, you might as well not even write gamers for preps anymore and focus on follows and features. Not asking you to out yourself, but which company owns your paper? You can send it via PM if you like.

 

Our first edition deadline is 9:30. That edition has SHIT in it but runbacks from the night before.

 

this is our last edition. Someone in another department said to me when I mentioned that state college stuff would miss weekday (our weekend remains 11:30) deadlines. They said, "well, most people already know the outcome anyway so what difference does it make?" Right. So we can run Big East shit on the page and they'll give a rat's ass about that.

 

No, no, I got that. I was just telling you I could commiserate because if that was our last edition our paper wouldn't even be worth reading.

 

I heard you right.

But how shortsighted is that? How can that improve a product?

 

It can't. It won't. It's a stupid decision that likely will cause a drop in circulation.

 

Geez, who made your presses, Gutenberg? You should be able to have an 11 p.m. deadline and still get the papers out in plenty of time, unless they're printed way out of town or something.

The reason you're probably losing carriers is the shitty hours and the high gas prices. Now your bosses have made the hours even shittier.

 

I used to have a 10:20 deadline on Friday night's a couple years ago. Our press deadline was between 10:30 and 10:45 p.m. That was a challenge. I'd write the football and basketball gamers at the high schools if I was out of town, and I made sure to read that over at least once because the editor generally wouldn't have time.

I actually liked writing for the early deadline, but Saturday's paper looked like garbage if you were looking for pro sports. Even the 7 p.m. baseball games on the East were a long-shot. But we always had the Cubs' afternoon games on the inside.

 

I used to work for a publication that had 2245 deadlines on Tuesday and Saturday nights. Those were dreadful, but the production director was the tail that wagged the dog.