Dear dimwit on the phone

When I came to my paper many moons ago, standard starting time for prep football games was 8 p.m., then backed up to 7:30 and now to a universal 7 p.m. That works great for us because of ever-earlier deadlines. We can get the games in the paper, but there is very little luxury on time.

There are Saturday games here because of stadium issues, but 90 percent of then start at 1 or 2, with a couple of 1/4 doubleheaders and just a couple of 7 p.m. games. It's been that way for 30+ years, so we're used to it on Saturdays. Fortunately, almost all of the "big" games are Friday night except for playoffs in the later stages.

 

We're in a preps-heavy area, too. I'd wager 90 percent of what we write is preps related.

In the last four years, we launched an all-color GameNight football tab which runs in Sunday's edition (we don't have a Saturday edition and never have). In GameNight, we have stars of the week, statewide scores, that coming Friday's statewide schedule, updated area top-10 stat leaders for our seven schools, updated district standings, optionals (with art from most games) and statboxes.

NONE of that goes online. Only football stuff that goes online is a non-quote "webber" between 5-15 inches which is a little more than the stat box in paragraph form.

Downside is we lay out the GameNight section after we get back. So Fridays have become 6:30 p.m.-4 a.m. sessions. We have a four-person staff and all four of us are at games. Not much pre-design/template stuff you can do.

Good part is that it freed up the Sunday edition. Saturday cross country races get more play. So do weekend volleyball, tennis and golf tournaments.

Our GameNight section is packed with ads. Our preview section? It was canceled due to lack of ads.

Of course, we merged all of our football preview content into the week leading up to the season-opener (while still dealing with early season soccer and volleyball district matches).

The powers that be didn't like the page-count jumping up that week.

Told them if the ad folks had sold ads for the preview section, that wouldn't have been a problem.

Told them we weren't going to stop doing our job -- or offer readers less than in the past -- because the ad folks decided Aug. 1 was about the time to start selling ads for a football preview section.

 

Is anybody gathering copies of preview tabs for distribution this year? We're in no position to do anything fancy, but I was able to live vicariously through all of yours!

Our football preview tab is going to press any minute, for Sept. 12 publication. I had almost nothing to do with it (yay!), but judging from the fact that we were allowed to scale the non-core schools from stories with art to photo-free capsules, I suspect we're in a similar situation regarding ads.

I know it makes me a bad person, but I was not all that hurt when some of our ad-sales folks were laid off recently. It seems like a "keepsake" pull-out ought to be an easy sell.

 

CentralKYkid,

How big is your GameNight tab? Is it a pre-run?

I'm just curious how you work all of this. You go out and staff a game, come back to the office, write a short for the website, then write a full piece for the tab, lay it out, do breakouts (like stars, stats, schedules, etc.), then go out and cover something on Saturday to write up and put in the Sunday edition? And then lay out the Sunday edition? How many freakin' hours does all that take?

One of the blessings of a Friday night deadline was I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and when I glanced at the clock, I knew it would soon be over (for better or worse). Rare was the day I got out of bed before 11 am on Saturday. (I used to do Saturday college games, but the rigors of prep Fridays, getting up early to go to an afternoon college game and then work a full desk shift Saturday night just got to be too hard.)

 

Good thing is there aren't too many morning/early afternoon events for us to worry about.

If you're NOT covering something early Saturday, don't have to come back to office until after dinner break Saturday.

All four of us are in-house Saturday evenings unless we're at a preps event.

Sunday section is usually 6-8 pages (including an NFL preview page which can be laid out Friday before leaving for a prep football game). Our page 2, the scoreboard/area schedule/TV listings page, can be laid out from scratch in 15 minutes if the agate is coded for it.

I usually get page 2. Even if I get back from a soccer game at 9:30, not a problem to write 25-inch story and lay out 2 by 11:20 (when lotteries move on AP wire).

The GameNight tab is printed Saturday afternoon and inserted into the regular Sunday edition. We used to write our football "webbers" and go home late Friday. We'd then come back early Saturday (like no later than 10 a.m.) and lay out GameNight. ... then have to turn around and lay out regular Sunday edition.

Although it makes for some long Friday nights, we like this strategy better.

 

Good Lord, a tab PLUS a 6-8 page regular section?!?!?! And 25-inch gamers?!?!?! Whatever they pay you, it ain't nowhere near enough!!!

By comparison, my last shop we'd have 8 pages on Sundays. By the time we got in our local NAIA football powerhouse, two in-state football teams, national college football and our regional conferences, one mostly local page (college and prep volleyball, cross country, hockey, whatever), Major League Baseball (or NBA/NHL) and anything else (national golf, auto racing, etc.), it was bursting at the seams. I tried doing a 1/2 page on NFL stuff, but that usually got tossed for lack of space and ad stacks.

 

Just got the first "Are ya going to do better with the JV and freshmen football coverage" email of the season. I was honestly surprised they used their real name.

The answer: You might want to talk to the coaches who refuse to send me the info. They don't seem to be terribly concerned about coverage themselves.

 

In defense of us not getting paid enough, we really do like working together.

Myself, CK-Kid and our boss have been part of this group for the better part of the last 10 years, and the guy we just hired is a damn good guy who fits in well with us.

The first year we did GameNight, we'd get a couple of pages done Friday night, leave around 2-2:30 a.m. and then come back around 9 or 10 to finish up. Then, we were free to do whatever we wanted -- unless we had something to cover that morning/afternoon/whatever -- until coming back around 5. It was exhausting.

The second season was much smoother, and we chose to stay each Friday and get everything done -- that way we could come in later each Saturday. It's better that way.

 

I agree with that. Once you get rolling, it's easier to keep going. And, unless you're in a large city, there's probably not a lot to go out and do at 2 a.m. anyway. I'm just surprised that, in an era when cutting back seems to be standard, you get that much space and can fill it.

 

It's tough some weeks, like when three of our teams are on a bye week. But we find ways -- features, what-have-you -- lined up to fill it.

 

Mark2010,

The 16-page tab isn't a whole lot when it gets down to it:

1) Cover. 2/3 page photo. 1/3 page add. And scores from all 7 area schools. Usually laid out before midnight.

2) Contents. 5 "By The Numbers" pullouts. And 4 "Tweets of the night" sent to a hashtag we have set up or directly to our main sports handle.

3) Stars of the Week. 1/2 page ad. 5 stars (with big mugshots) with school, grade and one sentence of stats.

4-5) Main Gamer. With multiple photos, stat box and Three Points (The Play, The Stat, The Repercussion).

6-7) Game 2. Half page ad on 7, which leaves room for maybe 12 grafs and a photo.

8-9) Game 3. Half page ad on 9, which leaves room for maybe 12 grafs and a photo.

10-11) Game 4. Two smaller ads on 11, so we used bigger art on 10 than we did on 6 or 8.

12) Game 5. Game we did NOT cover. Staff report with box and art from other newspaper.

13) Game 6. Game we did NOT cover. Staff report with box. No art since 2 ads on page.

14) Stats and district standings (we have teams in 4 districts).

15) Scoreboard/Schedule (Schedule can be put on page before that night's games, scores move on AP wire or can easily be taken from state association website).

16) Full-page ad.

 

That's still a lot of stuff to do on deadline. We did a preview tab for our college team and it took four days to write and paginate it. What size are the pages?