the growth of local-local

It won't be local cubed?

 

My problem with local local (local local) is when it dumbs down the whole soup. Happy local, stories on puppy dogs and that new ice cream store (how retro!) are considered news in lieu of national stories. The if it bleeds it leads mentality moves from TV to papers.

I'd like to see local done with the same gravitas as national; high school players and steroids, how much money is spent in the quest for scholarships and whether it exceeds tuition on the average, etc. etc., but instead we're obsessed with what local fans think of fill-in-the-blank. Easier, but better?

 

We need a style for this. I thought it was already local, local, local.

I'll bet it's the Evil Empire that shortened it to local-local.

 

Have any Gannett newspapers tried to integrate highschoolsports.net into their sports Web sites yet?

I'm really jealous that Gannett owns this property. Highschoolsports.net has already done all the dirty work behind the scenes -- every one of our area athletic directors puts their schedules (and updates) onto that Web site. ... Trying to convince them to ALSO put their schedules onto a second Web site, something that's under our supervision, is going to be a chore and a half.

 

What does the site have besides schedules, though?

 

And I disagree that this is some kind of local-local, hyperlocal schtick that we should turn our noses up at. This is a way to use the resources of the web to better serve our readers. ... if only they could put about one-thousandth of the smarts and creativity of a site like google or something and make them work worth a damn.

 

In some areas, not much. And yes, I've been spending a ton of time on there lately.

 

Well, I have to give that idea a big whoop-de-doo then. They gotta have more than schedules and a hope that fans get excited and post crap on there.

Geez.

 

Yeah, but a complete database of schedules is extremely valuable for in-depth preps coverage -- it's something you can use as the cornerstone to hang everything else off.

It's just not realistic in an era of dwindling resources for me to have my staff type every varsity sports schedule for every varsity sport team at 25 local high schools. All that stuff already exists, though, in a user-friendly format, at highschoolsports.net. If you had ownership or access to those databases on your web site, you can use that as the hook to link to results, game stories, rosters, message boards, etc.

 

It exists if the AD pays to use the software that works with highschoolsports.net.

 

Oh Preps Factory. Nothing like filling out a complete basketball box score with 12 people from each team only to lose everything because you clicked enter instead of save (or something) at the last minute. Highschoolsports.net is 100 times easier, unless you have lame duck athletic directors who don't bother to use it properly.

 

I'd say it took 3-4 years for everyone (the ADs) to catch on in our area and really start using all the functionality of highschoolsports.net

Now that they do, it's a tremendously valuable and important local sports resource, and we have nothing to do with it.

Also, my readers (and even people in my building) are signing up for highschoolsports.net's e-mail alerts, which are sent instantaneously when there are schedule changes (weather-related, etc.)

I should be the newspaper owning that market.

But clearly if I wanted to jump-start my own schedules, results, e-mail alerts system on my newspaper's web site, the learning curve of highschoolsports.net tells me I'd be 3-4 years from any true success in that area.

And that's in a perfect world of having the resource and technology to dedicate to such an online venture.