Staff Size

we're down to about 20k (if that).
Sports ed
assistant sports ed
1 writer
1 20-hour guy

33 high schools, one D2 school we cover like its an SEC team, two SEC teams (we share a beat writer with our sister paper and share content with another paper on the other SEC school)
Our 20-hour guy does the agate page for our sister paper and us, and covers a prep game on Friday nights.
The assistant sports ed covers the D2 school and chips in with preps.
It's challenging.

 

I don't know how you do it. You did have a full-time desker, but that's part of a universal desk now, right?

 

Staff size? Between 6 and 7 inches.

 

HH: Most days I don't either.
We have a couple of people on the universal desk who are sports specific most days, which is good for consistency.

 

Everyone on SportsJournalists.com is a 6 ...

 

I'm on staff at a 7,500 circ daily (M-Sat) that covers 13 high schools and a NCAA Div. II program. We have a 5-person staff (SE, FT, 3 PT) and do all layout, writing, photos, copy editing with 11 p.m. deadline

 

A former girlfriend told me 5 was average, so we're all doing pretty well in that department then.

 

Sub 10k daily w/6 high schools, 1 D2 and a couple of smaller colleges:
2 person staff (SE, FT) - do agate & little design, writing, photos, copy editing w/9:30 p.m. deadline
4 reporters
1 news editor
1 assistant news editor
1 lifestyles editor
3 designers (to be 0 soon moving to universal desk)
1 photographer

 

Ouch. Good luck

 

I guess it all depends on what coverage responsibilities are. Covering 15-20 high schools and a college is quite different then covering 4-5 schools and being of similar size circulation....

 

If you are 25,000 or below and have more than five people (four if you don't paginate your own pages), you are damn fortunate.

And the term "coverage" can be interpreted quite losely. It can mean "we'll run your score if the coach bothers to call it in" to "we'll do a feature on one of your athletes every single week". What seems typical is to have tiers of "coverage": bigger schools and schools in close geographic proximity get the most ink, while the small schools in outlying areas get an occasional mention. That's fine by me, but it does skew the numbers in terms of how many schools you actually "cover".

 

Fun graphic posted at Romenesko showed the Cincy paper having a sports staff of 13.

Including a Spectator Sports Strategist, who, I guess, is the sports editor. A person designated as Untapped Sports Interests/Xavier, a recruiting writer and a Planning Editor preps, or the person who normally be designated High Schools editor.

There's also a Planning Editor Sports who reports to the Consumer Experience director/analyst.

All the sports jobs ultimately answer to the News Director, while the Editor is responsible for the CP/R team.

The titles/beats for the reporters are something to behold, most of which I don't understand.

http://jimromenesko.com/