From The Washington Post: Amid layoffs and furloughs, sportswriters wonder what will be left of a st

Hard to say. One of the last cuts that happened while I was there was losing a sports reporter position, but we had an opening for the No. 2 Rockies spot. Kyle Newman, our preps reporter, was more than qualified for the Rockies job and was ready to show he could handle a bigger beat. We moved him to Rockies, and the preps position was eliminated. It saved a job. Gave a good young reporter a chance to advance. With how tiny the sports staff was already, I'm not exactly sure what other move there was to make. If you want to take MLB coverage seriously, IMO, you need two people on it. The Rockies aren't good, but it's a high-audience beat, and it's unfair to Patrick Saunders to make him be solo on such a grueling beat -- making one person cover 162 games in a summer is a good way to burn out a good veteran reporter. You're not going to make the Broncos a one-person beat. Nuggets was cut down to one person before I was there. Avalanche was cut from 3 to 2 before I arrived and from 2 to 1 while I was there. There is no Rapids reporter on staff (I hired a dedicated freelancer to cover them during the season and the Rapids were so thrilled to have someone from the Post there covering them, they were willing to work with us on anything. It was a no-win scenario, so we pumped as much of a limited freelance budget as we could into preps, in addition to me writing columns and digging in on enterprise and investigations with staffers. And when it came state tournament time, it was all-hands on deck, and the traffic and and subscriptions made that worth it. But again, would it be worth not putting two people on your two biggest pro beats that drive the most audience? Probably not.

 

That's nice. Go tell some of the other publications - including some within your chain - this, please. Their decisions have been ... poor.

 

So I think we agree. In a time of dwindling resources it makes sense to focus on the professional sports teams and major college beats and, sadly, reduce coverage of high school sports.

FWIW, when I made my original post I thought about the Post moving Newman to the Rockies from high school sports.

 

Would be nice if you could spread the word to all big newspaper chains regarding preps still being valuable. It seems to me most news organizations do not value coverage of high schools at all. You should be a consultant as you speak the truth.

 

Every working journalist should be subscribed to multiple news outlets.

Subscribe to your local competitors, the largest outlets in your state (if you're not at one), and a few national publications.

 

That decision isn't universally wise.

Major metros like Denver, sure. Plenty of areas in the country that once covered pro sports that no longer need to. Pick up the AP wire and dig in on preps.

 

Can you write it off on your taxes? No way in hell I'd pay for those myself.

 

No place I've ever worked, union or not, ever reimbursed me for joining professional organizations. They did pay for our AP contest entries up until a couple of years ago when they decided "it wasn't worth the expense"

 

Companies won't reimburse, but subscriptions can be tax write-offs as unreimbursed business examples.

 

To the best of my knowledge -- and also when I did my 2O19 taxes, you can no longer write off virtually ANY expenses that come out of your own pocket. Supposedly, it will continue this way through 2O25. The only way you can write off expenses is if you're a full-time freelancer or do extensive freelance work for several clients on a part-time basis. If you want to write off expenses incurred and you're a W-2 employee, forget it, it's been outlawed.

 

And if we ever stopped calling them "preps" -- which nobody in the public calls them -- and started calling them "high schools" -- which everybody outside of the media calls them -- the situation might be even better.
Can we please retire the word "prep?" It's an archaic, 1940s term that is kept alive only because it fits in a one-column sig.

 

Next thing you'll say is to stop using cagers, harriers and gridiron! Or, gasp, thinclads!