Dear dimwit on the phone

Things like this just make me shake my head and make me sort of glad that I got away from the business to do something a little safer and saner, like be in the Army and maybe get deployed.

 

It's moments like that where I want to get philosophical and ask if the built-up complex of youth and prep sports has some troubling outcomes and presents the false carrot of athletic scholarships when academic money is far easier to get. Do that sometimes to callers and at times it takes the wind out of their sails.

I'd like to do it in emails, but in a corporate setting, almost any response feels like it's going to end with blowback on me.

 

Absolutely!!

 

Gotta wonder if hyperlocal coverage plays a role as well? Routine regular season games getting big treatment "because they're local," and all the trappings. Tank goodness our ME understands most readers are more interested in the major leagues and NBA than the JVs, no matter how hard the JVs try.

 

At the times where I worked anywhere near a pro sports town, it was a nice fallback. Middle of summer, nothing local going on..... blow out the major league team down the road. But not more than twice a week unless they were in contention.

If it's April and I've got 175 inches of prep track agate (God, I hate that!!!) that no one but the sports editor and his brother care about to jam in, I can bump them to page 3 and no one pitches much of a fit.

When I worked out in the boonies with no pro teams within 500 miles, I would NOT run regular-season gamers on the cover.... unless something drastic happened (no-hitter, perfect game, Artest in the stands, etc.) Features? Enterprise? You bet. Gamers? No way, I'll turn on the brain and find something else.

 

You've set up a clever straw man right there. We all recognize that JV game coverage is to be avoided at all but the smallest kinds of papers - the community weekly, maybe; I certainly covered it in Warrenton, Va. - but there are local and regional rivalry high school games that are, indeed of great reader interest in particular markets.

The question most of us are grappling with - and perhaps in your market you're immune to this - is "what is it we can do, and sell, that no one else can do better than we can?" The answer, for us, ain't MLB and NBA.

In this market, it's high schools - about two dozen in our true "core" circulation area - and the two SEC teams that are within an hour's drive. I want more of both of these and I'll happily live with less of the other.

 

Covering high school sports down to the JV level means you will have a turnover of readers: every. single. year.
No one that doesn't have a kid involved won't give a shit.
Hell, most papers have a turnover of readers with varsity as well, I know I rarely check on how my HS school is doing until the playoffs.
Pros, college, local events, profiles on preps, much more interest than any varsity gamer in the regular season.

 

You have to do the above on an area-by-area approach.
Our daily's readers expect and get local high school coverage in the fall, winter and spring in all sports.
We don't cover JV and lower things, but publish the results in the briefs.

 

I think you're wrong to generalize about this based on your own experience.

 

Yes, JV is a convenient SportsJournalists.com scapegoat. And when I started nearly 30 years ago at a community weekly, I did plenty of JV coverage ... not always in person, but I know how to work the phone.

We have eight high schools, a small juco and a couple of race tracks in our area. Varsity are the focus, and the JC has a small sports program that I'm developing contacts at. We have a Div. I mid-major up the road that, while we can't staff, we do pay attention to. But as I tell our editor, who admits to being a sports illiterate, I don't think the hyperlocal model applies to sports to the point where we're staffing middle school games. Fans in our area want to know about Podunk and Springfield and Shelbyville ... but they follow the Niners and Lakers and Giants as well.

And to address my original premise: Are 3-4 col. photos and 12-20 inch gamers (that the Bigtown Banner may devote all of 7 lines of agate to) playing into unrealistic expectations from some? It may be.

 

Personally I think covering anything lower than High school is asinine. There are of course certain exceptions (a local little league team makes it to Williamsport or something like that), but no one cares below varsity except for the special circumstance. I will gladly kill someone's scholarship chances because their 10-point JV performance got bumped for a sidebar about last night's Central v South tilt.

 

You cover what your area calls for.
My former chain of weeklies did well in the summer because we covered Little League - and not just the Major Division. During prep season we covered JV and middle school playoffs when the schedule allowed.
People who think you shouldn't cover less than high school a) work at a big circ paper; b) are young and stupid; or c) are not nearly good at the job as they think they are.