Dear dimwit on the phone

Yep. I think the majority of papers --- regardless of circulation size --- have smaller staffs than they did, say, 10 years ago.

Feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong. Does anyone here work at a place, or even know of a place, that has more bodies now than it did in 2003?

 

Newsroom-wise, we're down a couple of spots.

Sports-wise, we're the same four-person staff we were in 2003.

 

I've heard a lot of you talking about regular-seasons and practices overlapping, but how many of live in states where the seasons themselves overlap?

Here the high school football regular season runs to the first weekend in November, then the playoffs extend to the first weekend in December. Basketball season starts the first Tuesday in November, and the playoffs extend to the first weekend in March. Baseball and softball season start the third weekend in February. Also, soccer is a winter sport here, with the season running from mid-November to the first weekend in February.

It can be a problem for the smaller schools, although some of them still have so many good athletes that they can still have playoff football teams and competitive basketball teams going at the same time. It's less of a problem for the bigger schools, as most of the kids who play football don't play basketball and the basketball kids rarely play baseball.

 

When I worked in the south, everything overlapped. Winter sports started in November and football could run till mid-December if you went deep in the playoffs. In some places, baseball/softball actually started in early February, which meant as much as 6 weeks of overlap.

Lots of forfeits at smaller schools that depended on the same players for more than one sport.

General rule of thumb for newspapers was the sport deeper into the season got priority. There were some years I didn't see any winter or spring sports until the season was halfway done because of other teams going deep in the playoffs.

I liked it up north much better, where one season normally ended before another began.

 

It's kind of odd. At the place I used to work, they had three full-time sportswriters about 4 part-timers and two full-time photographers.

That place now has FOUR full-timers in sports. But they don't have any part-timers and the sports staffers now take all the photos. So they have less staff, but they were given an extra full-timer for it.

 

In Ohio, at least in my part, schools just reschedule the early-season games and contests when a team from the previous season has long playoff run.

 

Some do. Sometimes it's hard to make the schedule work. Some states have weekly competition limits, so you really can't schedule, say, 4 basketball games or 6 baseball games all in one week in order to make up for ones lost earlier, be they weather-related or for something else.

 

I am truly blessed, then. When I returned here the previous SEC stepped into a "senior writer" role for the department and has never been anything but supportive. He was happy to be rid of the paperwork and scheduling hassles.

 

My turn.

We have close to 30 high schools, and we cover every graduation (maybe five are phoners, but every school is represented.

The two biggest local schools -- Royalbury and Queens Falls -- get A1 center and the next two get B1 center.

Five minutes ago, the phone rings.

Guy on phone: "Why didn't you cover Royalbury graduation."

Desk guy: "We didn't? I am sure we did."

Guy on phone: "It's not in today's paper."

(Two distinct voices behind him): "It was in yesterday."

"Oh, OK."

I do so wish it had been the one I had covered.

 

The worst aren't the former sports editors from this paper that are still around, but the weekly guys that constantly bitch about how you're not covering the team enough. It's worse because he's also a parent of a kid at that school, so he's also a total homer who gets defensive when we write anything about any of that school's rivals. Posting rude father comments about us not covering his kid on the website is also one of his crimes.

The one former SE that is still around has actually been very helpful when I've needed him.

 

My Sports Editor Emeritus (term mine) normally behaves in direct relation to how well his raging entitlement complex is being satisfied.

Many weeks, it's enough to come in during the afternoon, grab a free paper from the back, chat with whomever and head home. He provides serviceable (if sprinkled with 1967 words like 'cagers') copy and decent photos, but will complain behind my back to the first person who'll listen if the stringer work he's getting is too infrequent or the games are bad. This year, we didn't have a team make state hockey, so I had enough regular staff to cover boys' basketball district finals and he threw a conniption fit.

Sure, he's known for having a unique perception of reality and some of the columns are a tad racist (this spring he's railed about BLOGS!, players who can't bunt, said Jerry West was better than LeBron and appeared to be personally offended that ESPN runs foreign soccer scores on the Bottom Line), but he's also the only institutional memory we've got, is fairly well-connected and gets his stuff in. Frankly, as a senior on a fixed income whose apartment complex was gutted by fire last summer and has had health problems all year, I can't say I don't blame him, though he's a remarkably effective example of what I don't want to become in this business.

 

I know of who you speak of and it sounds like all is the same as it was when I was in that neck of the woods 10+ years ago.