SID stories on the front page

Or, you could be like us when it comes to college baseball, which is a major sport in our neck of the woods. AP does nothing with it, so it's a niche we can fill. The state colleges have a good following locally, there's plenty of interest, but the campuses are all a couple of hours away. So it's edited SID stories, stories written off of box scores and other sources, or nothing.

 

Even the stuff I wrote for our website wasn't "loving" toward our teams. It was written with the emphasis on the hometown team, but not loving. My AD yelled at me once when I wrote that our soccer team had scored its first goal of the season, but was playing its third or fourth game. And then when that same soccer team lost 11-0, he told me not to write anything. I understood my job; he did not.

 

Exactly who would you suggest I get to cover an event of interest to our readers, when we are a staff of two writers and have a limited budget for stringers and/or travel? Those of us out here in the boonies have to make do with the resources that we have and sometimes that means running an SID-written story on our sports front. Sorry if that bothers you, but I think I'll get over it.

 

I'm well aware of the constraints you face. I'd imagine with such limited resources that prioritizing coverage would be a challenge, but if anything should be produced by your staff, it's the sports front. Running SID-written gamers isn't journalism, it's transcription.

 

So if you have four or five stories on the front and two writers, how would that work, exactly? Sure, it all depends on timing of events and such, but at small shops, sometimes you don't have a choice. I get your point, sore sure, and it should only be used as a last resort and be cleaned up as much as possible, but I would guess it's unavoidable in a lot of situations.

 

We use SID stories whenever and wherever necessary and identify them as such. It bothers me a little to put "Staff reports" on someone else's work that we merely collected and put on the page. Using these stories is the only way we're going to get in information our readers want on a regular basis and with the play it should have. Our staff is half of what it once was. I would love nothing better than to have a beat writer for the college, which is in a nearby neighboring town and has a lot of athletic success.

I agree with someone earlier: some principles are outdated in today's newspapering world of user-generated content, doing less with more, stemming the tide of declining subscriptions. I'm all for longstanding ideals ... until they prevent us from doing our job as best we can with the resources we have. It's a juggling act: a full slate of games, a short staff, seven days a week of publication and the journalistic principles learned via textbooks in the serenity of a classroom.

We fight the good fight with whatever rudimentary weapons we have.

 

"Hey, we have a prep basketball notebook, but the Super Bowl is today. Do you think it hurts our credibility to put a non-staff story on the front?"

 

And thus give the reader something less than you could because of some perceived afront?

 

Let's see, you have three games that merit coverage, a staff or two writers and a part-timer and 20 high school phoners coming in. You're inability to be at an event doesn't lessen it's importance.

 

I don't think that's what he was saying. I think he was saying they'll write their own story off the box score which, if done right, has plenty of advantages.
College baseball is always my go-t0 for this because it's the one we do it with most, but it's likely the same for college hockey, lacrosse, and a few other sports with big regional but little national interest. The SIDs put a lot of material out there, but the stories themselves often need a lot of editing. Because of that, it's easier to write your own story 90 percent of the time.
Now, if you know where to look, you can find everything you need. The box score has a play-by-play and stats. The SID's game story will add a little bit of color and descriptions of key plays, plus a quote or two and a photo gallery if you're lucky. There might be some other sites like ASAP Sport where you can get press conference transcripts. Some SIDs even put video highlights and video of postgame interviews (SEC baseball SIDs are great about this) on their sites.
If you have 30 minutes or so, it's easy to take all of these elements and cobble them together into a story that's unique enough to call your own.

 

Yeah, it kind of does. If you have one staff writer and three important games, you're making a decision that the one you send your writer to is the MOST important one. We make judgement calls like that every day.

 

"No. Just get the Patriots stat guy to write up 20 inches and we'll give him the sports centerpiece."