AJC and Hartford Courant not covering Super Bowl

Charlie ... maybe he said Associated Press stories. Can't remember exactly. But the point being he was looking at the bylines. As far as the other part of the quote, the metro two hours away is in our chain, and any story that we run of theirs is attributed at the end as "so-and-so is a reporter for the major metro." I doubt he reads both.

 

My parents live in Athens and have subscribed to the AJC for more than 30 years, but they're letting the subscription run out because the AJC is half the paper it was even a few years ago. Of course, they say the same thing about the Athens paper, but they still subscribe.

 

Charlie, as I noted on another post, I see this level of sophistication in readers a lot more than you do, apparently. And I'm talking normal readers, people I sit next to in the bar. A lot of them notice.

 

My experience is that a lot of the people who subscribe know the paper and its writers better than a lot of people who work on the paper do. Because not everybody who works on the paper reads the paper (or more than a section or two). And just about every subscriber reads the paper (or else why would they pay for it?). I've handled the dumb calls you describe, but I believe the vast majority is extremely hip to what's going on and where the content originates. Now I'm talking about subscribers. The other dumbfucks out there are generally clueless about how the paper operates.

 

I flew through Atlanta the day after Earnhardt was killed at Daytona. I picked up the AJC and it had unbelievable coverage of the event as well as great college hoops coverage of the entire SEC and ACC. I remember thinking what a great section it was.

 

People who read the paper, know more than we care to admit.
I've always thought that and will continue to think that.
The AJC not staffing the game seems silly when you realize the proximity and the local connections at the game.
That being said, I'm more taken aback by them not covering Georgia on the road. That's more of a jaw-dropper.

 

Frank has a point. But what scares me as a journalist is that this is about to become a trend. Papers are going to be watching to see how the public reacts to what is going on in Atlanta and Hartford. If its favorable (making money), I wouldn't be surprises to see others begin doing it for events like the Final Four.
In some respects, this pattern is already done for the NBA Finals.

 

Please pardon me for quoting myself, but in light of all the you've-got-to-be-kidding things happening today at newspapers around the country, I might revise the earlier comment and change "autumn" to mid-February.

 

Spoken from someone who has probably never covered a Super Bowl. I've covered seven and I worked my ass off at every one. I would guess the same would be the case for almost every print journalist there.

 

It is discouraging to read the opinions on this thread that obviously stem from desk people's inherent dislike of writers. Gang, the ship be sinkin' under all of you. No Super Bowl coverage today, a copy desk in Bangalore tomorrow.

 

I hate my answer, but the reason is there are a lot of (remaining) newspaper readers for whom the sports section is the first section, and they care more about the G-A-M-E than any of those other things.

A less distasteful way to describe it is the fact that the game is an entertainment event and something the paper and its writers can have fun with. There aren't many weird or unique ways to come up with describing how the shuttle crashed, or the Dow dropped 350 points today.