Fall preview tabs...anyone else still doing them?

Ugh....I couldn't imagine doing a volleyball AND football tab. We are doing a football tab, though one of our local high school principals did't want her school to be included because it didn't have volleyball. Yeah, well we got that school's football team in anyway.
Perhaps the principal should have a talk with the volleyball coach, who didn't even take the time to return the preseason survey that we sent out.

 

At my last shop someone floated the idea of doing a football tab and a fall-sports-other-than-football tab. When I asked who was going to put the second tab together since the sports staff was overstretched as it was just doing the football tab and the daily section, the idea thankfully was dropped.

 

We could probably pull off a "fall sports other than football" section, since all the elements of the other previews wind up in print or online over the course of a week. But to organize another tab? <shudder>

I didn't even think about the challenge of selling it!

 

Most places I've worked, it was enough of a struggle for the ad staff to sell the football tab. Seemes like it was an afteethought after the pride section. I can't imagine a volleyball tab either, since most of the volleyball teams I've covered, if they did make the playoffs , are one and done.

 

We do a football and basketball tab, both 48 pages, stacked with ads. It's an easy sell for the ad department.

I was in disbelief when I first read this thread and realized some papers aren't doing these. Real money maker for us and should be everywhere.

Not sure if the business is worse off than I thought or that there are just some sadass lazy fucks working in advertising at some of the shops you guys are at. I'm leaning to the latter.

 

Our fall tab includes all sports for all 15 schools we cover — football, volleyball, boys and girls cross country, soccer (those those that offer it), boys and girls (only a few girls teams) golf, and girls tennis (those that offer it).
It's the same in winter with boys and girls basketball, wrestling, and boys and girls swimming (those that offer it).
In the spring, it's baseball, softball, boys and girls track, and boys tennis (those that offer it).

 

From a sports information standpoint....the local paper tab came out this weekend....us and the other local D1 had less combined column inches than the smallest private HS....and Florida and Florida State and some of the other (not all) colleges all on one page.....It is what it is. I guess.

 

Early deadlines?
We ran into that with ours being the first week of August. A lot of the D-II and D-III schools hadn't even reported yet, let alone had their media day. The high schools, meanwhile, we had access to all summer and the state D-I schools had had their conference media days we could cobble something together from.

 

Huh? Whatever happened to "Hi, we're doing our football tab and we need your help..."
Then we respond by saying "Sure, whatever you need, when would you like to talk to our coach?"

This access is available all summer as well...

 

Different situations everywhere, I suppose.
We had one D-I that worked just like you described. It's two hours away, but the head coach is a local guy for us so he's always accommodating. The SID is also great to work with, and provided our cover photo and arranged an interview time.
And then there's the D-I school that's 45 minutes away. It changed SIDs over the summer and no one in the athletic department seems to know how to answer a phone or return a voicemail.

 

Our high school football tab was 60 pages this year, up 4 pages from last year. We had 25 pages for editorial (We cover 33 high schools).

It was my first time really in charge of the tab and its direction. It was OK. It could've been a lot better, and I hope it is next year. We had the challenge of working on a bigger tab with one fewer staff member, so that was fun.

 

Ours came out last week. I haven't seen others from around our area. Maybe they wisened up and realize what a resource drain it is when the staffinf is so low. Woild he hetter in the future to just ask for two more pages a day in the section and knock out four to six everyday for a week for high schools, a few days for the NAIA team and a few days for Boise State.

But, I do enjoy making the covers. I got an iPad Pro earlier this year and an Apple Pencil. I never could get the handmg of software like Illustrator, but I've dabbled in art all my life in different mediums: oil pastel, warercolor, clay sculpture, charcoal pencil drawings, all kinds of stuff. The stuff I've done with apps like Procreate are pretty decent.

I've made illustrations for the covers for three special sections now, all coincidentally for sports, and everyone has praised them. I like that it's something unique to our product and more creative than the same old posed player portraits.