State HS Associations demanding more coverage of girl's sports

This is a conversation we had at my place ... the idea that people who want high school sports coverage want it in print, not on the web. We've made a major commitment to covering preps online as space in the papers has declined, and we constantly get asked "when's that going to be in the paper?"

Nobody seems to have an answer here. The ad staff can't sell anything for print or for the web, and management just wants us to do more and more on the web, even though the audience clearly wants it in print.

Here's a question: Will there always be this scrapbook mentality, or will it die out in the future, when people who grew up with the web (and didn't read print products) have their own kids?

 

The demand for print will continue to get smaller and smaller until the kids who are now in middle school are old enough to have kids. Then they'll just want everything sent to the iPhone built into their flying car.

 

crimson, there are a few of those moms in every secondary sport. Of course they don't realize that Tuesday night basketball games draw 1,500 people and soccer games on the same night draw 50 because of what people care about. They think their sport is being discriminated against by the media, school and anyone else they can pin blame on. They're actually hilarious if they don't make your head expload first.

 

They are.

I must've really ruined the kid's career, too with my lack of coverage. He got a D1 scholarship and is now playing in MLS.

 

Where I grew up, that wouldn't be too far into the future.

 

Yeah, I have run into that, too. It's silly scheduling on their part, because it forces those supporters who do care to pick one or the other.

Now, in fairness, where I work now we have a geographic nightmare with schools in the same district separated by more than 150 miles in some cases. So a school will travel, play a Friday game, spend the night and play the other school in town on Saturday. Two games in one trip. I understand that. What we've asked them to do is move up the start time for the Friday games.

 

Sounds like one time when I was leaving a soccer game, and someone suggested doing a story about how all the referees for Podunk High games were from either Bigtown (10 miles down the road) or Biggertown (40 or so miles away), so poor Podunk never got any calls. Took every bit of self-control I had not to burst out laughing and/or tell him he was full of it.

 

I can't say I've ever been asked to increase coverage of girls sports by anybody connected with the NMAA. A cheerleading (now a varsity, um, sport? here in NM) coach once told me I need to be covering her activity. It did not go over well when I told her that wasn't going to happen.

 

Sometimes we just have to practice saying "NO".

 

I'm the faculty adviser for a HS newspaper, and I asked them if they wanted to switch to an online paper last year - It would free up $400 a year to spend on equipment instead of printing. All 10 kids voted for the print edition. So, the scrapbookers are still strong, even among kids.

 

Florida already has it. They have a state championship and everything.

 

Girls flag football is a spring sport though, isn't it?