Is it just me or are today's younger journalists lazy?

Or maybe they believe gamers and stats are what your readers want. And you disagree with that on the basis of ... what? Because the popular thing around here is to say gamers are dead?

I am not sold on the idea that readers don't want the basics from us, especially on local. I think if we dump the games and stats, we give people even less reason to read us. People can say what they want about that, but I don't think they can produce any empirical evidence that shows people want a sports section that isn't about who won and who lost. They are guessing -- and they are gambling with someone else's money.

When I covered preps, I always had a long-range project going. Some weeks I'd spend a couple hours on it, some weeks I couldn't. If you get three of those in a year, you have your clips.

What's best for your career is not necessarily what's best for the paper. Try to do both, but mostly do what they want you to do.

 

It has never been proven that people don't want the raw facts from their sports section.

If your place can afford both that and in-depth features, analysis, etc., then that's what they should do. But if it can only afford one or the other ... you should know which way they will go. And SHOULD go.

 

Most gamers simply don't offer anything new. I can look at a summary of last night's game and winnow from that all the raw facts I need.

 

Sorry, LJB, never going to agree with that ... if the gamer is well-written.

If it is not well-written, well, that's a place to start.

 

Are we talking about raw facts or something written with texture? A bad gamer has too much of one and too little of the other, needless to say. I don't read many that are loaded with the other. When's the last time a gamer knocked anyone flat on their ass?

 

by gamer i assume you mean including coach and player observation/react?

those things are vital - how else can you gauge the team's psyche?

 

Yeah, that's always smart thing to do in a report -- put a team on the couch. I worked with a jackass who did this in the first three grafs of every story he ever filed.

 

I see them quite often from the better beat writers around the country. See them every night on our feature wire.

 

You know, you can. However, those of us who have lives do not wish to stare at pages and pages of agate and piece together the previous night's action like a puzzle. Neither do I want to go online and read 18 inches on every game. I want someone at the paper to do it for me. I want to spend three minutes reading a tightly edited NBA roundup, not 40 minutes dissecting all the box scores. And, while I sometimes enjoy watching local pro teams play an entire game, it is rare for me to do so because I'd rather go to the beach or, ummm, spend "quality time" with my wife or read a book or watch something unrelated to sports. Five minutes with a gamer fills in the blanks for me. We are crazy if we think our readers already know all they want to know about the games by the time the newspaper is delivered.

 

A different presentation about what happens in those games is what's needed.

 

Why? If I am a reader, and a normal sports fan as opposed to a psychotic one, why do I need "alternative story forms"? I care about the local teams enough to want to stay in touch, but one story a day is fine for me. A game story that tells me what happened in the game, gives me an idea of the big picture, tells me about key injuries or trade possibilities -- that's all I need.

Our mistake is we look at declining readership and think it's a reflection of "the way we always did it" not working anymore, when the truth is that fewer people give a damn no matter what we do and we're not going to solve that by being less useful to the people who do.

 

When there are 30 high school teams in the area, and over 20 are 3A or lower in size and at least 45 minutes away from town, there's nothing finer than the call-in. The majority of our teams are so bad that all they warrant is a three-inch box anyway.

But my SE can't see beyond high school sports because he's from bumfuck nowhere and it's all they ever had.

I don't really believe they'll do things my way. I just need a point-of-no-return way to find other work because this shop isn't worth the effort. I don't think another newspaper is the answer either, so we'll see.

I base the fact that my shop needs more enterprise, features and sports news on the fact that we always get feedback on these things. We get calls, we get posts on the talkback feature on our Web site, we get e-mails. I have never gotten feedback on a gamer, no matter how well I think it was written. I really believe readers what to read about things other than Johnny Asscrack's 12 points against Richard Pryor High.