no box scores

A lot of major-league markets have plenty of prep coverage online to drive readers to the website (and some in print). It's what we're doing now and it's been pretty successful. Perhaps EV should take a look at it.

 

Bingo. Here's one instance where newspapers have an advantage over the internet. And too many seem intent on finding a way to piss that advantage away. Unbelievable.

In basically the size of one or two 'screen views', a newspaper reader gets every box score at their disposal. And yes, fantasy folks get their info from the internets generally, but a lot of readers can glance across a page and get a handle on what happened the previous night across all of baseball, basketball, etc.

On the internet, that takes how many clicks? 15 for most sports? People aren't going to click that many times. Or spend an hour watching SportsCenter and you still won't get a bunch of teams and stories.

Wise up, folks. Know where you have an edge, and maximize the edge.

 

Two seasons ago, we went from expanded box scores to the basic short boxes because our space was cut. WE GOT CRUSHED!. We brought them back May 1.

This year, due to another space cut, we reconfigured our baseball agate page and so we could get notes and briefs in, we went from the expanded standings to the basic standings with just W-L and winning Pct. Again, we got crushed. The publisher, who never talks to me, came to my desk and asked about it because she was getting the calls BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED TO SEE THE LAST 10 GAMES AND HOME AND ROAD records. So we brought them back and cut out the notes last week.

So yes, people still want their agate in the paper. I do too. We're shrinking to a 46-inch web this summer from a 50-inch. I can't wait to see what this looks like next year.

As for preps, We really push our Web site for that and we get a lot of traffic. The kids and parents are now programmed to go there. We have stats and photo galleries and they eat it up. We still have roundups, features and some gamers in print, we we have been able to slowly push more of it online without the complaints. It's the teenagers and 30 and 40 somethings who go online anyway. the 55-plus who read baseball boxes are the ones who read the print product and the ones who call and bitch the most.

 

At the very least I would get league boxes in.

We are running standings, Red Sox and Al East boxes first. If we have room for more we use it.

We have been running NHL and NBA agate with One paragraph blurbs on each game done prior to deadline. and when the playoffs started, we were running the home team box with the jump and depending on the room on the jump page, we would also run the playoff glance with it.
Our A.M. report page is basically a catch all. A scoreboard page with a column or two of briefs/transactions/America's Line/TV highlights/sports history/trivia.

We had some complaints early, but people are getting used to it.

 

The paper I worked at, we NEVER ran expanded boxscores, just the basic ones, b/c we didn't have the space. Never heard any complaints from readers in my six years there about not having expanded boxes. I guess you don't miss what you never had.

 

Some people really overestimate the pull of prep sports. Even at its best, you're targeting maybe 20-25 percent of your readership (the big sports like football and boys basketball excluded, they draw from more than just a friends-and-family demographic). I think the grand majority of readers who have no stake in the schools and have no kids in the schools just don't care. They'll pick up a section filled with prep soccer and go "what's in this for me?"

That's the one-stop shopping argument. And if you're any bigger than 15K, you need to be providing your readers with everything, not just "local, local, local." Otherwise, you're encouraging people to buy the competition, if there is any.

 

I pick up a paper now and ask "What's in it for me?" I sort of care about one MLB team, and have mild interest in a couple others. So I take at most, one glance at the MLB page for that box and a quick look at the scores. NBA playoffs? If it's a game I care about, I already know what happened from watching it and/or reading the AP story online last night minutes after it ended. What does the coverage in your paper offer? The same story, except delivered 10 hours later? Right, I need that. I love the NFL, but again, I already know all the info I really want to know when I watched the games, follow the stats on my fantasy game tracker, and reading the game stories & boxes online on Sunday -- a day when I actually have time to read. My favorite NFL team is on the other side of the country. How much coverage can your paper give me about that team's game? Probably two grafs in a roundup and the boxscore, which, again, I've already seen 10 hours ago because I actually care about this game.

So why I do even bother looking at the paper? Because I want to read the staff stories about the local colleges and pro teams, and also some occasional preps, since I went to high school in the area. I've been in this area a long time, I follow those teams closely, and I'll eat up however much your paper can serve up on them.

Buy the competition? If you're talking about competition for national wire copy, I don't even have to buy it. It's all there on ESPN.com. The only reason I pick up the local paper is to read about the local teams. If you can't make yourself the definitive source on that because you are devoting big chunks of your space and resources to national stuff, then I WILL buy the competition.

Your typical newspaper isn't competing against ESPN or other national sports sites on the national content. Your typical newspaper is getting its ass kicked by those outlets in that aspect, has been for a long time for anyone who wants coverage of stuff outside the paper's coverage area. The way to sell your product isn't to continue to devote large chunks of space and resources to content that's not exclusive and can be obtained for free in a much more timely manner elsewhere.

As for local stuff, doing more local doesn't automatically equal doing more preps; it could be more local pro or college stuff too. But even if preps only target 20-25 percent of your readership that would buy a paper just for a prep story, how many of your readers do you think would buy your paper for your day-late, ultra-slim national wire rehash roundup? It's about giving them more of what they can't get elsewhere, and that is local. You can't be a one-stop shop anymore because you can't fit enough of everything in to satisfy every readers' every need, and the days when newspapers could pass themselves off as generalists by running drastically cut rehashed wire copy are long gone. If you can't give substantial national coverage to the people who want them, they will go elsewhere; and truthfully, you don't have the resources to give them that, never did. It's just that you didn't have serious competition on that front before the Internet changed the game.

 

I see what you're saying, and there's a middle ground here. I am an advocate of being THE source on what's going on in your town, but not sacrificing so much of everything else. You can be THE source without resorting to eliminating anything resembling national coverage and agate.

I'll take my current stop as an example. I'm not from here. I don't have kids. I have no conceivable reason to give a shit about any high school sports in town. Why would I pick up a paper that's devoted nearly entirely to game coverage of local high school sports? The nearest "major" paper is two hours away, so this paper is the only game in town. I surely better give a little bit of everything to everyone or they're going to go away.

Now if we have a space issue and it's a question of killing some wire copy to get compelling local copy in, by all means, scrap the wire. There's very little wire that NEEDS to run. Just the basics. Standings, boxes, schedules, the most important news of the day. But to completely localize a paper if you're in a decent-sized city isn't the right choice IMHO.

 

Only 11 percent of almost anybody's readers are interested in prep coverage. But they're all passionately interested.

We crap on 11 percent of our readership, and the bean-counters are going to pee themselves a little bit.

 

Bumping this to include a link to the APSE Web site, where the sports editor explains what happened.

http://apse.dallasnews.com/news/2008/052708romantic.html

 

I don't know if there's more here worth considering...the primary reason I read my local sports is the agate. I want to quickly get the snapshot of the entire day in baseball, a few high level notes, and the knowledge of winning streaks, last 10, etc. A quick flip and I get the PGA Tour field, minor league standings, and local holes-in-one.

Personally, I have no use for AP stories about the national beat. That's what I get online. And while Local High's Joe Jones finishing third in the state high jump is a nice story, I'll never read it. Ever.

 

Captzulu, you're on point with my way of thinking. I work for a 26K daily, and we are heavy local. We'll run notebooks, features, anything because that's what people gobble up...we only get four pages per day, six on Sundays. Page 3 is always national, be it roundups or any other writeups from key stories that day. In agate, we'll run standings, golf (a gold mine around here) and transactions, and then boxes if we have space. In sports briefs, we have the day's stories of interest in maybe a graph, two tops.

People will get their national stuff anyway. They read us because they want what's going on in town, what with seven prep schools, a Division II university, a junior college, and three minor league franchises. That's what sells for us, and God forbid if we ever prioritize national over local.

As my old SE told me, "They'll find the score to the Astros, Cowboys or Spurs on ESPN anytime, anyday...but they'll only find the scores to podunk High's game in our paper."