Zoning

If your coverage area is spread-out enough that zoning makes sense, fine ... if you have the manpower to do it right.

But if you have limited resources, you're never going to be able to pull off more than a half-assed effort. That's the problem many mid-size papers have. They set up a plan to cover all these areas through zoning ... and then they have to make do with three fewer reporters. Which means fringe areas get skipped over for some stories. Or hard decisions have to be made on what to cover in your main areas, so something else gets left out. And so on.

 

And another thing about zoning:

Zoning fails because readers in County Seat A don't give a shit about Rural Town B 10 miles away, while Town B's readers don't care about Fringe Town C.

In these days of limited resources, sometimes you have no choice but to put a story about County Seat A in Town B's zone. Or because of early deadlines, you have no choice but to put a story about Town B in Fringe Town C's zone. So readers in both areas are getting stories they don't care about.

There are very few papers right now that can pull off zoning well enough to satisfy a majority of their readers. Considering that, it's a flawed concept.

Too bad, because it could work ... if done right.

 

That's what I've always thought, and I'm surprised that so many people here are against it. To me, if you're replacing content that people don't want to read with content that people may be interested in, it's a no-brainer. Of course, the resources are again necessary to pull it off, and we don't often have that.