Covering youth sports

The merits of doing this aside, the notebook idea is good. Another thing is to look at former coaches that may still live in the area. A lot of them volunteer at youth events to keep active. And if nothing else, if you find a former coach who still lives in the area and coached there for years, he/she at least knows people involved in youth programs that may make interesting stories.

Would camps count? Depending on where you live, it may be rare, pro athletes or even college athletes get involved in local camps. Do a story on the athlete and why he cares about the youth.

Do a story on the funding for youth events, etc...

I'm not saying the idea is a good one by your publisher, especially with the quota, but if you take a good attitude, a good read may come every once in a while.
And trust me, if my publisher ever made that demand on us, I'm pretty sure I'd be quitting with the rest of my staff.

 

This is an entirely different discussion, but if that's the case then why do we ever run any sort of story on big events?
Super Bowl? The entire country has seen it, why even run the score the next day?
Final Four? World Series? Niche sports. If it's a non-market team, no one cares. If it's in-market, everybody watched on TV.
College football game involving a state team with a big local interest? Meh. They can get that from ESPN or the big metro sitting on the sales rack next to your paper.
Big local high school game? There were 500 people there. Those are the only ones who care and they know what happened.

Maybe I'm naive or clueless, but I believe our readers have certain expectations when it comes to things like that. They don't necessarily buy the paper on a day to day basis for national coverage, but they do expect to see it at certain times and will take notice when it's not on the menu. If you give them a reason to look elsewhere, they will.

 

My dad back in Florida says he will read any story the local newspaper runs about the Gators

 

AGAIN....I am not saying make it a regular beat where you cover game after game. Getting results and an occasional feature would be a nice add for most small papers.
I also disagree that there is no interest of parents below the prep level. Ignorant statement...

 

The unintentional luxury of being forced to acknowledge something that only the parents and coaches of the kids involved would care about is that you can put the onus on the parents and coaches to provide the content. Coach-provided roundup items, parent-provided nominees for some sort of random ass "kid of the week" boilerplate feature. Hell, get advertising involved and let the parents put their money where their mouths are by paying for ads praising the fruit of their loins.

Community engagement, increased interest in the product (even if only in the youth page) and minimal editorial involvement while fulfilling the publisher's mandate. In a perfect world, he may even give you kudos for the proactive approach to the issue in a way the benefits everyon hahahahahahahahaha almost got through it. But better to try to take control of it before he imposes his will and you find yourself writing 30-inch gamers on some random rec-league basketball game.

 

One of the worst parts of the mandate was the days he wanted it to run -- Wednesday and Sunday. All of our high schools play on Tuesday night, and Sunday is the day for a lot of big events, football, and some high school. It was like those two were just picked at random without regard for what else needs to go in the section.
I'm trying to do this on Monday and Friday, when things are slower, so we'll see how it goes. Apparently he was mad that we didn't run some youth basketball photos this past Sunday, even though I did a spot feature/sidebar on the children's fun run of a big local 10K race.
This is going to be a fun spring. I can already tell.

 

Not defending your publisher by any means, but he probably picked those days because they're the biggest days for ads in most papers.

That's why our youth sport pages run on Wednesday ... but again, the SE at our shop was able to get two pages added to the Wednesday sports section, so we still have the usual room for Tuesday night preps. And with the deadline for contributed content Monday at 5 p.m., those youth sport pages can be slapped together Monday night if needed.

 

Can't you do these pages ahead of time on a slow day. That's how we did it at the first daily I worked at. I think Monday afternoon I did the Weds. "Billboard" page which features dart league, bowling league and shuffleboard scores mixed in with youth hockey, baseball, softball, what-have-you.

 

It's probably not only about time to put it together, but also about the space in the section needed for other events they're covering.

 

This is where you need to sit down with him and go over what his expectations are. And then point out that you have a finite amount of space and time, and that if he really wants you to devote these resources to it, then he needs to earn his higher salary and come up with a plan (well, don't say that part, but the point stands). If he wants those specific days, then he's going to either have to give you extra space, or you'll have to cut out something else which may generate some complaint calls that you will happily forward to him, since it's his idea, after all. It's amazing how much management thinks an idea is easy to implement, until reality hits.

Also, in terms of workload, you don't have to run everything up to the minute. You can set a deadline a couple of days before, and that anything after that goes in the following week. This will give you time to put out the pages, instead of rushing to type in bowling scores. Also, limit the time that a submission can be used, so you don't get someone trying to give you five months worth of golf results at once. Anything more than three weeks old or so doesn't run.

 

It's not just the stuff you mentioned. We already put those things in a separate item (which does run Wednesday and Sunday and has for years). He wants stories -- full-blown, honest-to-god stories -- that take a few man hours apiece to produce. That's the real issue here, is that that new task is on top of what we're already expected to write.
And just for shits and giggles, two other "improvements" to the section were ordered this week: every story on the front page must jump; and our sports columns must now run entirely on an inside page (thus creating a budgeting and design nightmare twice a week). I think we're the only sports section in America that doesn't run its sports columnists on the front page.
It basically feels like him trying to put his stamp on the paper, which is fine. It happens. It's a big adjustment, though, after years of having very hands-off publishers. It's reaching the point where I feel like I either don't know what the hell I'm doing any more, or maybe I never knew. I don't think it's the latter.
So ... bridge abutments. Are they really as tough to drive through as people say?

 

Some pretty good stuff on this thread...And we wonder why circulation is declining at most hubs.
Also find it interesting that a few times it has been pointed out that nobody is talking about 30-inch gamers on LL but yet some folks still drift there....