Combining sports departments

And SC, you're right -- they have already started cutting a couple jobs here and there. But if the combined product is better, there's a good chance they won't have too much of an effect.
Places like Hilton Head, Beaufort, Charleston and Myrtle Beach are not getting ultimately obliterated right now. The economies aren't getting demolished (as bad as other parts of the country) and they're still doing ok w/ advertising.

 

I've been through this a few times. It can be a good thing temporarily, but eventually the readers of one of the papers get screwed.

 

MU, I don't know if the combined product will be better, but I doubt there will be a dropoff. They've still got a good-sized staff (eight people at two papers with a combined circulation of less than 30K). But instead of the two sports sections having their own identity, they'll be a lot of days where the section front is dominant toward one paper's coverage area. If I'm getting the Beaufort Gazette, why do I want to read a centerpiece on a Hilton Head Christian kid, when before I got a centerpiece on a kid from Beaufort High? I've got no problem with them doing this if the paper is combining, but why am I getting a Beaufort Gazette with Hilton Head stuff in it? But maybe that's just me.

 

Having been through a merger like this -- two, actually -- I'll warn y'all that it's not as easy as it looks on paper.

On a human level, you're asking the entire staff of one paper to familiarize themselves with a totally new coverage area (assuming a majority of their markets do not overlap), and that takes time. Mistakes will be made on deadline, for that simple reason. I don't care how well you know the area or how close the two papers are, if you're not involved in putting out a section every night for another paper's readers, the depth of your familiarity with that area will be lacking. There will be a learning curve, and for some people it will be a steep one.

I wish them the best of luck -- but it will take time for them to get into a rhythm again, and I hope management gives them time to work those things out.

EDIT: And as Frank and SC just posted, one paper's readers are going to get screwed. It's inevitable.

 

I believe this will become more common among papers owned by the same company and in close proximity, with regard to "sharing" staffs or combining to cover events and save money.

How do you work that out, though? Get the staffs together for a sit-down? Looks like that would be important to work out before starting the process.

 

I got no problem with combining staff. I've got no problem with working together to cover big events. I just don't understand why you would have the same sports front (with the exception of football and basketball) every day. If I'm getting the Beaufort Gazette, I don't want the CP to be about a local Hilton Head team and my local team is below the fold on the bottom of the page. If I'm getting the Beaufort Gazette, I want my local team to be the CP.

 

If they're smart, SC -- and more importantly, if they're organized -- they'll have swapping local CPs on those days. That's what we always tried to do, and it was mostly successful. It takes work, but swapping zoners is pretty common.

But what'll happen, most likely, is that Beaufort's inside local pages might have a Hilton Head story, where before there might have been a wire story or something.

It's going to take a lot of organization and coordination to make it work. It's also going to take open attitudes from the people on the ground, which may or may not be a problem. Writers will be writing for both papers, so even if their beats are Beaufort-based they would do well to keep an eye out for something that would be good in the Hilton Head paper. That's not something they ever had to worry about before. Now, they will.

 

And they might do a damned good job of trying to be fair to readers in both areas (although often it doesn't work that way). But there's no escaping the fact that while once readers of each paper had a product specifically to them, now they get something aimed right down the middle when teams from the two areas play each other. Unless you have the writer do two distinct gamers, but that isn't going to last very long.

 

Hi all. Thought some of you might be interested in a little background on our merger and our plans for handling it. I sincerely appreciate the complimentary things said about me on this thread; I would be remiss if I didn't doff my cap to my staff, which includes former Gazette sports editor Lance Hanlin, now one of my two assistant sports editors. He obviously was put in a very tough spot by this decision and has responded professionally and positively. The Gazette staff has followed suit. It includes Buddy Hughes, who was the Gazette's employee of the year for 2007, and Brandon Parker, a young writer and UNC/Northwestern grad who has a tremendously bright future.

I also would be remiss if I didn't chide SCEditor for suggesting we're "bloated." ;D

To answer a couple of questions floated in this thread:

• This merger wasn't mandated from corporate; it was primarily a business decision made by our publisher, Sara Borton, for whom I have worked for eight delightful years. (She is a rarity in this business — a publisher with an advertising background who nonetheless understands editorial is the franchise and does right by the news department.)

• This is not Phase I in a complete merger of the newspapers. That might eventually happen — all bets are off in this economic climate — but that doesn't seem to be in our immediate future. (There are plans to move all Beaufort employees into the Packet's 8-year-old building, which also houses the press that prints both products. My understanding is that this will save us a very tidy sum in overhead, a method of making budget that is far preferable to layoffs and/or cutting news hole.)

To be brutally frank, I initially was as skeptical of this plan as some of you have been, and for many of the same (obvious) reasons discussed here already. Rest assured, many of you hit the mark. These problems are real. I fully expect some people will believe their section is less "local" than it once was. It also is clear we cannot continue to cover high school sports — in my view, the most important thing we cover but not the only important thing we cover — the way we always have. We have the manpower but won't have as much newsprint, even with our plans to, on occassion, replate for content between Gazette and Packet press runs.

I also have to admit that I undertake this endeavor with a degree of sadness — my goal in going from the Gazette to the Packet eight years ago was to put the latter's sports section in the discussion when people talk about the country's best small-circulation departments. I won't be so immodest as to suggest we're there, but I do think we're awfully close. Now, I've been asked to dismantle my baby and start over.

But after some reflection, I decided at least some of my initial resistance was based upon the fear of the unknown. And upon my timidness to depart from a formula that, while successful, perhaps could be improved upon. Finally, it dawned on me it might be fun to rip it apart and put it all back together again.

In that vein, we've totally redesigned our beat structure, which now includes the first-ever college writer for either paper, the first sports reporter specifically charged with creating Web content and "secondary beats" for each reporter, designed to get us off the familiar path and tap new sources (ha, ha, he said they're going to "tap sources.") I've tried to give reporters input into their new job descriptions, and although readers remain foremost in our plans, there's no law against us enjoying ourselves while we serve them.

OK, OK, I think I'm starting to fart sunshine, so I'll end this too-long post right here. If anyone has specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them ... when I can get around to it. As you can probably understand, I'm busy (and tired) as hell about right now. ;D

 

The three eastern North Carolina Freedom papers -- New Bern, Jacksonville and Kinston -- are going to have all the pages designed by a universal desk in Jacksonville. They're not combining sports staffs, just shifting the design duties to one desk. I'm thinking that that first Friday of high school football isn't going to be fun. Election night won't be full of laughs either.

 

Good stuff, Jeff

Best of luck with all of it

 

Jeff: Thanks for stopping by. Obviously, you know I think the world of you and your sports section. It's been the best small circulation daily in this state by miles since you took over.

That stems from jealousy of wishing I had a five-person staff. I'm sure you know you've got a bigger staff than most at newspapers your size. That doesn't mean you don't utilize it, because you do. You guys do a fantastic job with your staff. But most papers your size in this state have a staff of three or four.

Regardless, I certainly wish you guys the best of luck. Keep up the good work.