It's Monday morning and I need a support group

And woe be to the designer/copy editor who runs the same horoscopes or comic strip for two days in a row, or puts in the wrong answers to the crossword puzzle. One place I worked, you did that, all the people wanting to know if Mary Worth decided to get the abortion or had no clue what 13 Across was had the complainy calls routed to their desk. Really cut down on the recidivism rate.

 

In your sports photos, are there more pictures of athletes standing around or those actually doing something? I can probably guess how much space is devoted to youth sports based on the answer.

 

Seems like a tab online might save everyone a lot of headaches. Takes 3 min to scan/crop/etc. a photo. Have a section online where they stay up for a couple weeks, then after that people can buy the photo that ran online.
Is it newsworthy? Not a chance in hell.
But it's an easy way to drive traffic and have an inroads to tell people they aren't going in print. Hey, ink and paper are expensive.

 

We get contributed team photos on youth sports, but we'll go out and shoot preps in action, which tells you we're probably like everyone else, I hope.

Now that we're heading into the summer, it's that age-old problem of not knowing when the heck the junior bantam showdown between Podunk Drugs and East Podunk Rotary is ... except for the mom who calls a couple of hours before you get in the office wondering if we're going to be there. Of course, Mom doesn't realize the only nightside shooter has already been scheduled to the max by features, we're out at the MMA show at the Indian casino or maybe covering a major wreck on the expressway. I think most folks are content just to shoot us the team picture after the tournament, but some content would be nice, especially when it's in town.

I honestly tried last year to try and get some of the leagues to send in weekly standings, but there was little to no interest. Most leagues seem to have their own websites nowadays.

 

Not against running first-place little league photos for the Podunk newspaper. It is a team winning something. Against running a photo of the sixth-place little league team because it is not news in any shape or fashion, even by Podunk newspaper standards.

 

There might only be 50 people at Podunk High's soccer game, but there is at least a name people from Podunk know and many went there. If Podunk High wins the soccer league title, it might cause them to read with the high school alma mater connection or interested in reading about success in another sport. The Dairy Ace sixth-place little league team is probably not going to get that.

 

At my old place of work, there were plenty of successful kids teams that won lots of championships. Never had a problem running those on a space available basis. Always a good page filler especially during the summer. Now we are talking one bi-weekly papers and three weekly papers.

At my new place of work, I long for those successful teams. I now work in a much less affluent and seemingly, less talented area. Just don't have the great teams I use to have. Summer is going to be a bitch, I can already tell that.