Staff Size

I, for one, would love to have a job tapping those untapped sports interests.

 

Thanks. We'll need it. Two of the designers have been at my shop more than five years, the other less than a year (to replace a long-term person who left). One will stay in another capacity, the others will have the option to go to the universal hub, but it looks like they'll go onto other things. Grim times.

 

Agree completely on "coverage'' issue. Many will say 10 when is essence they write a season preview and never cover minor sports or not covered much during the season

 

We have three full-time, one part-time person (we do all of our layout) covering eight schools. The smallest is a private Christian school not in the main state association and doesn't offer every sports. Have hardly staffed any of the school's games (other than its inaugural eight-man football home game, which wasn't even played in the same town it's located).

The other seven we cover hard. Each team plays 10 regular-season football games and we staff four games every Friday night (don't have a Saturday paper, but we have a 16-page all-cover prep football tab every Sunday). The main four schools are covered eight times minimum. Other three at least five times. So we're there for at least half of each team's games, home or away.

We also trade off with other papers, so on games we don't/can't cover, we still have plenty. Not just stat box with coach quotes, but photos and optional recaps in many cases.

I watch an average of three varsity soccer games a week, while a coworker staffs at least two volleyball matches a week. Part-time guy covers a cross country meet at least every other Saturday, not to mention typing in results of every local runner from every meet (even JV and middle school) and writing a weekly notebook/weekend preview.

Sports ed serves as main football columnist (Friday preview, MMQB), main golf writer (this week is state tournament a little more than an hour away and he's covering all four days and taking his own photos) as well as main design since me and other writer are usually out at soccer/volleyball.

In the winter, it's plenty of basketball, bowling, swimming and wrestling coverage. In the spring, it's baseball-softball, tennis, track and lacrosse.

We don't cover any colleges, even with Louisville, Kentucky and Western Kentucky all within 90 minutes each.

So when we say we cover seven schools, we cover seven schools.

 

This is the case at our shop. Our local school we have someone at every home game, and even for road games will still get longer writeups. Our other 11 area schools vary from 10 miles away to 50 miles away. We assign to their games based on proximity and game importance, but we try to get to at least one home game at every one of our 12 schools during each season. Everything we don't have someone at is briefed if they call in.

 

That seems very typical. Sometimes it's hard to explain to coaches and parents at the smaller, rural schools why they don't get as much coverage as the larger schools 6 blocks from the office.

Well, for one, you have fewer readers/fans/alumni. Two, you are harder to get to. And, well, there's some other stuff, but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

I have wondered why some of the smaller schools don't volunteer to play on alternate nights. A lot of smaller colleges started doing that a few years ago, realizing they could get a Tuesday or Thursday night game televised. As a reporter/editor, I really don't want to deal with live games every single night. But if I were a small school AD and was upset about getting overlooked I would at least consider a couple of alternative dates per sport per season.

 

When I was a one-man staff, I had 5 high schools to cover. The hometown school was the biggest, so naturally, they got the most coverage. Plus, they had some very good teams.

So what I would do is go to the little Podunk school at the beginning of the season, cover them once or twice, before their teams' records got really crappy, and that would satisfy them for the most part. My boss would want me to explain why I went out there early in the season, and I would tell him that Big School was going to get plenty of coverage later on, with the end of the season and playoffs, so I was getting Podunk out of the way early.

 

Sadly, AD's never think like that.
That's how you get a soccer tournament playing on a Friday and an AD wondering why you didn't cover it

 

Excellent plan.

 

Those who say they cover all schools the same are a) not being truthful or b) wasting a lot of time because most areas have a defined coverage area as well as on the outskirts of coverage area schools. Why would anyone cover the main school or two in the county/city the same way they would a school 35-50 miles away? Not smart business folks....