Dear dimwit on the phone

Four days into the fall sports season (only practices; not even games) and I have some yahoo commenting on a story that we need to give more coverage to the other teams at the big school in our coverage area.

I've written two stories since the season (which, again, is four days old) began: the football team's first day of practice (with a new head coach) and a feature on a former head football coach at the school who's come back as an assistant.

Unfuckingbelievable.

 

I was wondering today if it were possible, with the gold mine of web metrics we have at our disposal, to really deeply evaluate exactly what people read and then develop coverage from there. For instance, if volleyball stories get 10 percent as many readers as a football story, maybe we should only be spending 10 percent of our time on that sport. If three people read a track meet gamer and 1,000 read the baseball preview, then maybe it shows we should be at the track meet the next time and covering that baseball game instead. If one high school's combined readership accounts for far less than the proportion of your time you spend on it, should you trim that significantly? I know that doesn't account for people who get the print edition, but it's probably not far from it.

With those numbers, it also would be vindicating to tell the Little Suzy's mom the reason we weren't at Suzy's swim meet was because the last time we did a girls swimming gamer it had four views while the softball team that played that day is literally of 155 times more interest, per web data.

And is this just a case of the chicken and the egg, where more coverage means more future interest? Or is that true in some cases, like with a high school in general, and not others, like swim gamers?

I'm just putting a thought out there, so before everyone on this site jumps on me, realize it's just an idea. Any thoughts on going that route or using that as a defense for your coverage decisions when the crazies call?

 

I believe our paper uses Google analytics to do that, but I've never checked out the numbers.

 

I like the thinking...problem is...people are stupid and they will just pull the 'well if you wrote more about them, people would be interested' BS that we know is not true.

 

Yes. I have experimented with this at two different places, and basically, the conventional ideas about sports coverage - football being the most popular, followed by everything else - tends to be correct, with some tweaks here and there depending on which teams win. (If you have a dominant track program, then that'll get more hits than a traditional sport like baseball.)

In almost everything but cheerleading and dance team, boys' sports will out-hit girls'. And I imagine the cheerleading and dance gets hits because of the "creepers on the Internet" factor.

 

I'm big into following up on what I write and looking at our online statistics, so I know what kind of blog posts I put up are going to get the most views, which high schools are the most popular, etc. The only real surprise to me is that it seems the worse a team is, the more views their videos get. For instance, a recent two-minute preview video I did on a small-school football team coming off an 0-10 season got about 90 views in two days while a video interview I did with a two football players at a big local school the day they committed to major D-I schools a week earlier has about 20 views. I see that trend a lot, and I haven't quite figured out all of the logic behind that. Maybe because it's not a game coverage (read: negative coverage for bad schools), they respond in droves for something positive while the others are used to getting that attention?

Anyone out there actually doing anything with those numbers or are they strictly an advertising issue at most places?

 

Dear woman from the Sportsman's Club,

Seeing as how today is opening night for high school volleyball, tennis and soccer and it's also the night my football preview is due, I am highly busy. So when you call to ask that we do a story on the club because it's failing and has no members, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't talk at a brisk one word per minute. I know you don't have a speech impediment since you spoke just fine when I asked for the club president's name and phone number, so I would guess you were just nervous talking to the big important sports editor at the 8k circ newspaper, but I would love it if you would just SPIT IT OUT!!!!
love,
CC

 

Love those "Save our program" ideas that fly in...if only we'd run a story, then people would get interested.

 

That's what the advertisement department is for.

 

Not a phone call, but an email we got today:

Dear Rec Soccer Parent:
We already ran the photo of the Little Jimmies and Little Jennies who competed in the Bluegrass State Games earlier this month. The person who submitted it did not provide names, but we ran the photo anyway.

No, we will not re-run it -- or acknowledge the fact that the team has gone "undefeated" over "the last two years," according to you. The competition you faced over those two seasons was pretty bad, considering the average margin of victory was at least five goals (based on scores the team turned in, fwiw).

I'm sorry if we offend you by not re-running a photo that has already appeared in our paper.

 

Dear youth wrestling club coach,

Yes, I did write a column months and months ago about a local kid who has gone to D1 wrestling success in college, but how are you just now seeing it?

And yes, I stand by my statement that there is very little wrestling infrastructure in this town and very little support for the sport outside of the high school level.

And no, I do not feel the need to correct that story by writing another about your youth wrestling club, which you proudly point out is one of only two youth wrestling clubs in a 50-mile radius and boasts 20 members from elementary school through high school. Doesn't that in fact prove my original point?

I'll probably still call you for a story when wrestling season rolls around or another column falls through. Oh well.

 

20 members? The youth wrestling club in this little town probably has 30 to 35 kids just in the age 6 to middle school groups and only includes kids who reside within the school district. So I gotta agree with your point myself.