Dear dimwit on the phone

Where on earth did anyone get the idea that hyper-local was going to save the newspaper business?

 

For smaller papers (i.e. under @ 30K), emphasizing local stories and offering readers local stuff they can't get on national outlets is actually a sound concept. I believe it will be what keeps community newspapers going in some form (print or digital). But there has to be a balance, and you can certainly take the hyper-local idea to ridiculous lengths.

 

I'm working on our All-Area track team.

One boys coach is an idiot. I know he's a first-year coach, but there was no reason for him to vote for almost every kid from one particular school. He was the only one to vote for certain kids from said school, and those kids will be honorable mentions on the team.

There's always one coach that makes this more difficult than it has to be.

 

KYSportsWriter and I are at a smaller shop (20K six-day daily).

However, it shocked me when my 50-inch staff report -- I wasn't putting my byline on that thing -- was turned into the lead story on our main page of the paper's web site (wasn't lead on the sports web page or B1 of dead-tree edition).

I've tried to convince my editors (both the city editor and main editor are former sports guys and one of them hired me) that this is NOT a big-time tournament like select few parents are suggesting, but because they're getting emails from parents and coaches, my higher-ups are acting like the whole community thinks this is a big deal.

I tried to show them that based on our twitter and facebook followers, soccer is behind:
- NBA Playoffs (and we don't have an NBA team in our state)
- Euro Soccer
- Boxing outcome
- Tonight's sunset (which was indeed quite different, seriously)
- The sudden closing of the new Frisch's Big Boy is the most traveled part of the county outside of the interstate

But because it's local, it MUST be important and newsworthy.

At the same time, we sent a photographer and writer to a non-coverage county -- on separate trips -- for a 15-inch inside story on page 7. And last week, we ran a photographer out of hours and devoted a lead story THREE STRAIGHT DAYS to: (1) a non-fatality accident (2) on a non-major roadway (3) in a non-coverage county.

Yet somehow we were NOT allowed to send a photographer to the state baseball semifinals (Kentucky has just one state tournament) to shoot Neighboring Coverage County (when we shot the round of 16 and quarterfinals).

And then the ad section decided to do a special high school sports honors section ... without including the baseball semifinal team (and its school in general) even though that team had been on the front of the sports section every day for the last two weeks.

 

I feel your guys' pain. I'm half the team an approx. 10K daily and I get dueling suggestions from the other two news managers. The one who hired me admits to being a sports illiterate and trusts my judgement on what is and isn't a story, while the other, if she hears of a story, feels like she needs to orchestrate it every step of the way. Lately, been ignoring the latter ... I sleep better.

 

I just wish our powers that be would trust us when it comes to this stuff. Is that too much to ask?

 

this, and I'm lucky to have had that most of my career.

 

The longer I'm in this business, I've determined that most (not all) managers and middle managers care more about how the meal is made as opposed to how it tastes. Who cares if something sells or gets hits - was it a pain in the ass for them to do it, or did someone complain? Because that's always more important than something that - gasps - actually attracts eyeballs or ad dollars.

 

The whole KY situation makes me value specific circulation figures. Maybe there aren't that many zip codes/towns of residence for the paper in question, but at least for metro papers, you can solve/justify a lot of coverage decisions based on how many subscribers live in a certain zip code/area/etc. relative to the amount of feedback.

It has always interested me that newspapers have everybody's freaking address yet so many of these local decisions get skewed because the volume of email to higher-ups is >0.

 

If you start jumping everytime a dog barks, you will never find peace.

 

That's great. Can I use it at my next editorial meeting?

 

My favorite (rugby) team-submitted fake names: Frenchy LaCoque and Tommy Tebagge.