When's the latest you should get the score in a gamer?

I once worked with a guy who would write gamers that you'd be lucky to get the score in some nights by the eighth or ninth inch of his 27 inch OHL gamers... at a bi-weekly

 

Seven inches too late, as it turned out.

 

No sarcasm. It's true. The days of the newspaper of record are gone. If you don't believe that, I'm sure you'll happily go down with the sinking shp.

 

Get those boys down off the wall. They're packing their bags.

 

Can you speak intelligently to the travel habits of one William Santiago?

 

That's idiotic as hell. If newspapers, who have always had the historic task of being the medium of record, doesn't fulfill the task, who does? No one ever has an answer for that.

CBS Sportsline? ESPN.com? Good luck. Try to do some historical research based on an internet web site and you'll bash your head in. And that's just one reason why newspapers are mediums of record.

Not to mention, who is the medium of record for local stuff for which you are the exclusive media outlet for? No one is going to be checking si.com for my area high school scores years down the line.

Some of you are taking this "newspapers are dead" notion to brainless extremes. Even if a story just posts on website, you still adhere to who, what, when, where and why principles. Particularly in a gamer.

There's something a lot of you need to learn: Who, what, when, where and why doesn't equate to boring copy. Writing interesting copy for an instant news cycle doesn't mean you abandon Journalism 101 principles like reporting the score.

The instant news cycle also doesn't mean you abandon long-established duties of newspaperdom by not taking being a matter of record seriously. If anything, its more important because of the fly-by-night ethos many blogs and websites have.

But, you know, those things aren't important to people who'd rather declare that the ship is sinking instead of adhereing to principles that only are important, but set us apart and are our ADVANTAGE if we'd just sell ourselves to customers right.

 

I never said not to report the score, but I expected you to use that false argument. And one of the problems with the state of newspapers today is that people get so worked up about things like whether the score should go before or after the third graf. Way to look at the big picture. Rant on.

 

Score needs to be in first three PGHs, and also needs to be the first numerals used in the story.

 

But you did say newspapers are no longer mediums of record, and schools of thought that produce a line of thinking that running the score isn't important are generally rooted in people who believe as you do.

Way to deflect the point, pallister.

Frankly, as long as the score is woven into the narrative in a way that fits the lede and the context of the story, I don't care what graph it goes in. But any good game story not only captures a game as a singular event, but a game as an event among many events. That's the balance that has to be struck, that's what writing as part of the record is all about.

And the notion that someone can get information elsewhere is self-defeating. You're writing the story because they're getting it FROM YOU!

 

If the story runs with a score line, there is more leeway. Usually the third or fourth graf is fine. And before the jump.

 

I never thought about the latter point until your post. Thanks.

 

the score should read where it fits best to tell the story well.

editors who use hard and fast rules such as "third graf or before" have ruined the flow of many a good story. ... third graf or before, that truly is 1980s journalism.