World Cup coverage

We've been keeping the primary U.S. story out front most days. Today, we had the U.S.-England preview and South Africa-Mexico gamer on the front of one paper's sports section (we put out 2 each night) and just the U.S. preview on the front of the other.

 

Unless something changes in tomorrow's paper, the Boston Globe isn't sending anyone, which is a big shift from past tournaments. (They even had two guys in Korea/Japan, despite the time zone issues.) Guess they cast their lot (read: blew their international sports budget) with the Vancouver Olympics.

 

We are simply running US copy on cover (or if something major happens) and then have a game capsule wrapup on the inside page with the jump from the cover.
With a three-page section daily aside from Sunday (when I will fill a page with World Cup stuff) there's not much room to mess with Monday through Saturday.

 

Main story on the sports front, two dedicated pages inside (usually with a large graphic or ad on one page).

 

Gonna try to have a U.S. or Mexico gamer on the front and the others inside. Not counting on AP for any help, since all they had on our Limited feed was coverage of the opening ceremony, yet we had 18 writethrus on the sports wire of the girl lost in the sea.

 

US games on section front. Maybe others as warranted on slower days and as tournament progresses.

Always run 3-4 paragraph capsules on the other games of the day, plus standings. Try to get in 1-2 feature/color pieces per week.

 

Tomorrow, we'll have USA-England on the Sports front, mid-page possibly with smallish art, jumping inside with a roundup of the other games, 1-2 bigger photos and maybe a sidebar or wire column. Not really sure, since I'm not the desk guy.

We've got a regular Sunday feature that anchors the bottom of the Sports front, and our prep All-Area baseball team is the CP tomorrow, which is why we're not playing the US-England game bigger. We'll also run the full standings and schedules every day on the agate page.

Subsequent US games will get similar play, maybe more depending on what else happens to be going on., and it'll peak the closer we get to the finals. I'm in a college town with a big youth soccer program, so there is a good bit of interest in World Cup, and we'll play it accordingly, but we're not going to overdo it.

 

U.S.-England gamer on front page. Capsules of other two games below on jump page. Ran a preview on front for today's paper, with a local interest story.

 

WaPo has two sports-side folks there, filing daily. Steven Goff's covering the US team; Liz Clarke is writing more feature-y stuff.

 

Tie vs. draw? Does anyone care besides purists?