Quick parent rant

Again, you have to make decisions based on what the majority of your readers want to see in the paper on a given morning.

In our case, we have a school of about 150 students located about a 10-minute drive south of the region's biggest city, which has a school of about 2,000. Small school's parents/coaches all seem to have a complex about the situation, thinking they deserve equal coverage with big school, not because it is more successful (win/loss ratio is pretty close), but rather because of its proximity.

We have an ongoing dialogue with those folks, and no, we can't seem to get any of them to see things from our perspective. But it's usually entertaining to try.

 

I don't think people will ever understand what constitutes "news" and why "news" people concentrate coverage on certain things and not others. I agree, it's what people want to see in the paper, i.e. football, baseball, basketball, and more football. People want to see hunting in the paper as well, but how's that news? It's news about the regulations and the changes in the activity, using certain equipment and what not. So when I have editorial content on hunting, I try to limit it to that. But people know all that stuff, they'd claim they'd rather see little Johnny standing next to dead Bambi's daddy or momma.

That's just not news that little Johnny, age 6, killed a buck with his bare hands and a bowie-knife.

Soccer just plain sucks. What do you do from a sports reporter's perspective when you go to a regular season soccer game and it end is a 1-1 tie or worse, a 0-0 tie. I always argue it's not news when Podunk Prep beats Podunk High 4-2 in soccer because only 18 dipshits are there to watch it unfold.

Football is news because you have the cheerleaders involved, the band involved, the ROTC color guard involved, you have the Podunk Sheriff's department involved (parking cars, making sure traffic flows), sometimes Prep football in my area attracts politicos like the mayor, alderpeople, the governor (a couple of times), a state legislator or two, and sometimes a U.S. Congressman and/or Senator (they don't do anything else, other than begging for money and playing golf).

No other sport attracts that kind of attention from the public to be considered news, except for baseball playoffs and basketball playoffs or postseason.

It's hard to make people realize this, but I still try.

 

1). Anybody ever had anything do do with synchronized skating? Those parents are the worst.
2). Why do people feel that saying something is not a sport is a put-down?
3). A high school track coach who kept faxing results to an old, disconnected fax number (and was never around when we called her and never returned our calls) complained at the end of the season about how we chose to ignore her team and covered youth soccer instead. I informed her that high school and youth sports were apples and oranges. We cover high school games in person and if we can't get to them, we contact the coaches to get some acknowledgement of them into the paper. Parents and other interested parties send us youth copy. We don't cover youth soccer. We don't call youth coaches and if we don't get a story from a given youth team, we don't go chasing it. She didn't quite get that difference.

 

Newbie, blow it out your ass and fetch me a beer.

I'd give you a more detailed response to your ignorance, but it's late and I'm tired.

 

I generally agree, but I do think we as journalists occasionally have to bring up things people don't care about or aren't talking about. It's like that old saying about how we can't tell you what to think, but we can tell you what to think about.
Sometimes you have to beat people over the head with things to make them discuss it, like steroids in baseball or corruption in government.
But generally, I agree you cover what most of your readers care about.

 

yes, newbie was wrong. usually there's closer to 20 dipsits at those games.

 

When I have had notes or calls (and sometimes freelancers do), I have no problem with the "we're working very hard this year..." starter. Have also had the other kind, too. But I guess I really prefer any criticism be cushioned with a little appreciation.

Maybe that's just me.

 

Um, actually, it should go on the outdoor page of your sports section.

 

OK, to counter all the times I bitch about parents, I want to share a good thing: the local gymnastics director sent me a really nice, handwritten thank-you note for running the results of the local meet.

 

Jr. member, you didn't provide me with a more detailed response, so I have to conclude that you didn't really have one, other than the ad hominem.

Regardless, I don't think you could convince me that soccer warrants game coverage when the schools' basketball games coincide with the soccer teams' games. There are generally speaking about 800-1000 spectators at basketball games, and well less than 25 at soccer events.With 7 total pages in three issues a week, I can hardly see how soccer warrants coverage during the regular season.

 

Fine, I've had my coffee, let's go.

I'm assuming that since you have basketball and soccer going at the same time, soccer is a winter sport in your neck of the woods.

And perhaps basketball there is like football in West Texas, I don't know. It's OK to have priorities, but not to exclude an entire sport from coverage just because you don't think anyone cares or you, yourself, don't care. Unless you've received a directive from your higher-ups, it's your job to care.

Now let's talk about the game: you say soccer sucks when it's a 1-1 tie, or that two local teams in a 4-2 match isn't news.

Your perspective is clearly ignorant of the sport and of the community sports scene.

If you're covering a soccer match correctly, you should be keeping statistics on several things: shots, shots on goal, keeper saves, defensive saves, corner kicks, fouls committed, offside against, cards issued, plus recording the scoring plays and at what minute they occur, and even key defensive plays and what minute they occur. You should not just be waiting around for one team to put the ball in the net.

This way, if you have a 1-1 game, you have something to write about. Let's say that Prep had 12 shots on goal but High only had 2. Obviously High was able to convert on fewer opportunities, even though Prep kept possession in front of High's goal longer.

What if High was whistled for 20 fouls while Prep only had 5? That tells you either 1) High is a rough team or 2) the referees called the game in favor of Prep. If you see that two High players got yellow cards for pushing, you know the answer.

But some things you can't read on a stat sheet: did Prep score the winning goal in the 79th minute only to have it called back on offside? Was the offside a lack of awareness by Prep, or did the High defense execute an offside trap?

Then you've got your story lines: if it's Local Prep against Local High, chances are it's a district match. These kids have played with or against each other in club soccer for years. The coaches may be good buddies or may despise each other. Has Prep been accused of recruiting players that would have gone to High? Is Prep a country-club school while High's kids are from the wrong side of the tracks (you should know that's become a soccer dichotomy in this country)?

My point is this: I understand that you have limited space to write about a sport that you say nobody in your community cares about (though I would disagree with that as well). I understand that maybe your section needs to put higher priority on other prep sports.

But to say an entire sport isn't worth covering because you don't understand a 1-1 tie is the wrong attitude to have.

 

I had one football mom come in recently and she had highlighted everything I had written about her son and another sophomore on the team. Her son's lines were highlighted in yellow, the other kid's lines were in green. Green had many more lines.She said I should write the same amount about each one, because it's the first year on the varsity for both players. Problem is, the other kid is the starting QB and has throw 10 TDs and two picks in five games, her son, a receiver, has caught 8 passes in five games. I tried to explain to her, the other kid deserved the space, because he's having a great year. She didn't get it, claimed I was bias.
I love parents like that, they give me something to laugh about.