Tampa Trib apparently makes deal with Tallahassee paper for FSU coverage

Just to add to the list.
SEC Division
Little Rock wouldn't cover the Razorbacks
Jackson wouldn't cover Ole Miss or State
Big 12
Daily Oklahoman wouldn't cover Oklahoma or Oklahoma State
Tulsa World wouldn't cover Oklahoma or Oklahoma State
Dallas Morning News wouldn't cover Texas or any of the Big 12 schools
Houston Chronicle wouldn't cover Texas or any of the Big 12 schools
Big 10
Chicago Tribune wouldn't cover Illinois or Notre Dame
St. Lous Post-Dispatch wouldn't cover Mizzou or Illinois

Good plan, I would put that in place as soon as you can.

 

Some of those wouldn't fit in his criteria (stop covering omly if there is a 1-A football school in town), but it remains a bad plan. That said, Dallas is going down that path, which got ripped in another thread.

Add to your list Columbia dropping the Clemson beat.

 

Some of the papers listed above also don't have three pro teams in their city they have to staff too, and those beats tended to have two writers on them. So that puts the Tribune and papers like it in a lot different situation than a similar-sized paper that doesn't have pro teams but the same number of colleges.

And again, I'm not saying it is a plan I'm advocating. Just remember, each paper is different and has to figure on its own how to cover everything its readers are interested in.

 

I'm guessing that more people in Tampa care about FSu than South Florida. I know for sure more care about the Gators. If the situation is becoming that dire for the Tribune, they would be better served letting AP cover the Bulls. [/awaiting post total reset from Lucas]

 

Yes, Tallahassee is Gannett and it took them just about two years to clean out the sports department, which had won APSE and FSWA awards. The only holdovers when Randy Beard was the sports editor are St.Clair Murraine and Steve Ellis and possibly one copy editor. The staff they have in place now? Not impressive. All I can say is I hope the Tribune has a strong copy desk crew that can catch all the errors in Ellis' copy.

 

The first two sentences are probably true. But you and I both know that there's no way the Tribune could (or should) take a staffer off USF.

 

A more apt comparison would be the Kansas City Star -- it covers Mizzou and Kansas and UMKC, but not Missouri State, and nobody would make the argument that it should.

But it's a little different in SEC/ACC land. The Tribune is essentially ceding the FSU-diehard readership to the St. Pete Times, and despite Tribune management's protests to the contrary, the Times is still the competition.

 

Other sharing/swapping arrangements I'm aware of:

Jackson (Miss) now uses the Hattiesburg paper's Southern Miss coverage

Decatur (Ala.) will be providing its Alabama coverage this fall in a swap with Anniston for that paper's Auburn coverage

I have a feeling, as someone else has said, that we're going to see many more arrangements along these lines.

 

Is it really? If the Tribune still is providing FSU news, does the reader really care in this case whose byline is on the story? Like I mentioned before, and this doesn't apply just to this situation, when is it important to have your own staffer on a beat and when is it simply just OK to provide the news no matter the source -- AP, another paper, stringer/correspondent, etc. The best case scenario when you can't staff it yourselt is to share with another paper in the chain, but that isn't always the case.

 

We'd like to think that readers don't notice, but I'm convinced that they pay attention to bylines.
That isn't always for the good, some readers don't like certain writers, but still people pay attention.
In Tampa, FSU fans will notice and since they have a choice with the St. Pete Times, they may switch papers.

 

You know, you may be right. On my preps beat, I've had complaints that we don't cover their school, when the fact was we had a bunch of stories on that school, but correspondents did the story. If a school doesn't see me because I'm the beat writer, it feels we're not covering them no matter how many stories are done by correspondnets.

This isn't always the case, but it seems to happen every now and then.

 

Unless it's changed recently, the Salina Journal uses the Lawrence Journal World for Kansas Jayhawks coverage.