The news from Hartford

Well, not everyone reads all those other papers. Not covering somethng just because the bigger paper can theoretically do it better is ridiculous.

I work at a smaller paper that goes against two bog boys for coverage of a major D1 school. And our guy does it just as well, if not better, than the bog boys.

So saying the Courant shouldn't cover the NY and Boston teams because the others do it more is kind of ridiculous. I'm sure readers of the Courant are thrilled at the cuts in coverage.

So the former beat guys for the Red Sox can go cover a little league tournament now. Yay for him.

And if the trend is to go hyperlocal, why drop three preps guys?

 

Hyperlocal coverage has been the end of a lot of really good people in this business.

 

Too often local is a code word for cheap.

If you send your readers to bigger papers for pro news, what's the guarantee they read you, too? You make newspapers LESS essential, not more. And good local coverage takes money, too. When a local runner makes the Olympics, or a high school team goes to a big tournament, your readers don't care any less just because it's happening outside your area.

It's a matter of balance.

Editors and mangers say local and dismiss critics as elitist. But the Courant isn't cutting writers and coverage in a belief that it will make the paper better somehow. That's just ridiculous. What it was doing made it one of the best sections in the country every year. And now ownership is backing away from that excellence to save money, not to serve their readers interests.

 

All the preps cuts surprise me a bit. They can get Boston coverage from AP, but it's hard to say you're putting an emphasis on local coverage when you're cutting the preps staff.

Give it five years and half the papers are going to be gone.

I mean, seriously, why would people continue to get these papers?

 

I agree with Jemaz ... newspapers should always try to funnel their readers to other newspapers. :

The whole "We're going to give them something nobody else can" mantra is great in theory, but it rarely seems to be executed successfully. Frankly, too often, giving the reader "something nobody else can" turns into giving the reader something nobody gives a shit about.

Whatever happened to being the readers' source for all the news they're interested in? If a newspaper gave the reader "something nobody else can," plus gave them all the stuff that other papers do, the reader wouldn't have to go anywhere else.

 

Local coverage always means cheap coverage.

 

The problem, as I see it, is that the local stuff doesn't (hasn't) worked is because the people doing it don't really want to do it, thus the arguments here on why Hartford ought to cover pro sports. When I was a sports guy, I fully agreed with all of that. Now that I am a reader, I don't. All I can tell you is what I look for in papers like Hartford, or the Arizona Republic.

The AZ Republic used to send a guy (David ????, the sports editor) to the British Open and other similar places to write columns that neither I nor anyone I knew would read. There was lots of stuff like that that he covered. I cared about ASU and the local high schools (and I agree that it makes little or no sense to cut the high school guys in Hartford). I don't want to read about the Dodgers of the Cowboys or the Cubs in the Republic.

In the East Valley Tribune, I want to read about high schools and youth and recreational sports. And ASU and Arizona and the Pac 10. I am not looking to the Trib for a locally written column on the national baseball scene, which I get (they have cut out most of the other stuff for which I subscibed). I no longer subscribe, by the way, because they cut out delivery to nearly all of Scottsdale north of a certain point, which is remarkably south. But it just saves me money because they dropped the stuff for which I was paying them.

Newspaper editor and reporters lost touch with many, many of their readers years ago -- if they ever were in touch with their readers from the start.

When other people with better resources are covering the big stuff, it simply is not worth it to the readers to unsuccessfully (most of the time) attempt to duplicate those things. Turn to what the market does not have (and just might want). And then the chances of success (and long-term survival) would seem to me be at their greatest. But you have to want to do it and be fully committed to it.

This I know for sure: The other way is not working.

 

Sending an SE to the British Open, etc., is not the same as staffing a Sox or Pats game though. Now I'm not familiar with the Courant except for what I've read on here and some other places, but if I was in Hartford, I'd consider Boston or New York local coverage.

Agreed, if you wanted to cut the Open, Masters, Olympics, I could see that to a degree. But why give the readers less of a reason to read your paper?

 

Moddy:

I understand the intense interest in the Redskins in Richmond (having lived there). I just know from my own experience that very few people I knew looked to the T-D or News Leader for coverage on the Redskins. Based on anecdotal evidence (lots of conversations), I think that was a view more widely held than most at the newspaper believed and despite what reader surveys might have said. I also believe that readers wanted more coverage of the colleges, particularly Virginia and Virginia Tech, which has improved tremendously in the last decade.

All that is even more true today with the advent of the internet, which makes the Post and ESPN and all the other nationally based outlets so accessible to everyone with a computer. Those without a computer probably comprise the readership you don't want.

But, bottom line, John Markon (a brilliant writer) on the Redskins was such a waste and Jim Ducibella (in Norfolk) could hardly have been more boring or irrelevant.

 

I would love to know how many papers went to the British Open this year.

If any of them are papers that have had recent layoffs, whoever approved the trip should be shot.