When you were in high school ...

My local paper growing up was The New York Times. My mom brought it home from school, and I think I read it more then than I do now. Did they cover high school sports at all?

 

Hasn't it been established the parents are the ones who care about the coverage?

 

At our weekly, the editor famously hated sports. You'd see one story with a photo per sport per week outside the main town.

I was in a practice photo, leaning against a teammate with my legs crossed jauntily. Took some grief for that. The guy who took that picture, 30-plus years later, is the publisher at my current paper. It's a small damn world.

 

I'm just amazed you could ever do anything jauntily

 

I was in a two high school town that had a weekly that covered us, a suburban daily in the town over that covered us frequently but not always, and a major metro that covered us on special occasions.

I read almost all the prep stuff that related to my high school, whether it was the sports I played or not. I liked seeing how they wrote about my friends and liked keeping up on all the sports at our school. I had a decent athletic career and was quoted by all three and was never misquoted or anything.

I was in a 2-high school town and never once thought the coverage favored one school over the other. Never really thought about it. People would grumble about how the suburban paper didn't cover us enough, but honestly, I just enjoyed it when they did instead of complaining when they didn't. Swear.

I know I sound like the sportswriter's dream, but it's true. Then I became one and saw all the nightmares. All the "you're bias" crap I hear comes from students, parents and coaches in equal, stunning doses. It's some wild shit.

 

Got a job answering phones and typing in bowling agate for my local daily as a senior in high school. Counting that year, and the four years I worked there during summers in college, I've been in the business 22 years.

I felt back then that my high school, the "suburban" school of the county seat, was usually dissed by the paper. That was confirmed when the SE told me that we were nothing but a bunch of hayseeds.

 

I didn't read anything outside the MLB box scores, including my baseball team's roundups and stories.

 

We were 40 minutes southeast and 45 minutes southwest of the only newspapers of any size. Both were located in towns with multiple public high schools.

Needless to say, we didn't get a heck of a lot of coverage. The only reason we got any was because one of those bigger-town schools was in the 4A district with us. We pistol-whipped them repeatedly in football and baseball, so we got some press for that. Basketball, not so much.

The local paper came out twice a week. Friday's football games weren't (and still aren't) in Saturday's weekend edition. Left much to be desired.

 

You'd be Chef SoCalDude. Imagine the possibilities.

My hometown paper did a fairly comprehensive job covering the local prep scene: not an easy task given the size of the county. Although my one complaint was they went to the same well over and over and over again.

I do remember writing the SE a letter pointing out that our girls volleyball team hadn't lost a league game since the Nixon Administration and that his paper hadn't done spit on them.

Meanwhile, one of the outlying football teams might as well have called the paper it's house organ. Their coach was quoted in the paper on a daily basis; their players got more ink than in their annual and nary a day went by that we didn't hear about something going on there.

Never heard from him about this... although he later became a respected acquaintance.

 

I'll play along.

I read our local paper, the next town over's paper and the big state metro every day during study hall during high school (somehow it was set so however good your grades were, you could spend more days in the library during study hall...by my junior year, I was able to go every day).

I always started with the sports section and pretty much read it all...especially the local preps coverage. I played the three big sports, so I was always curious to see how conference rivals were playing. I'd say my hometown paper did a much better job then than they do now. They, like everyone else, have lost a ton of staff since then. But, they had a good mix of talented "young studs" and old time guys who really knew the area.

Actually, at the end of my senior football season heading into the state tournament, I was chosen as the subject for a 15-inch feature. The writer assigned that feature went on to cover preps at a major metro shortly afterward.

 

Coulda been worse - he could have called you "the veteran harridan."

 

You know, SF, I've always thought of you as a thinclad.