JV coverage

[Fourth and 8]

just got this e-mail today:

>Why does the Sports page not not cover
> all the athletic teams. I have never seen a write
> up of the JV Football or the Freshmen football
> games. These boys work just as hard as varsity
> players. For that matter Furlough Middle School has
> not gotten much coverage either. They practice the
> same amount of time, play the same amount of games
> but do not get coverage in the Sports page. They
> also do not have the advantage of band or
> cheerleaders. Does someone have to write the games
> up and submit them? Our coaches are too busy to do
> that and what is a sports writer for? This is not a
> letter to the editor but a complaint against the
> paper. You have done a much better job lately of
> covering things kids do in school and other various
> community events but you still have a way to go. I
> did notice that the Sports editor didn't fail to
> mention the Kennedy guy who had a DUI ( I think it
> was) and even ran a picture of him. Was this really
> news? This man was responsible for
> football camps for the boys. He is young and
> everyone does something stupid once in a while. I
> do not think it merited the attention it got when
> the man has done so many good things for the
> community.

by the way, we run jv, freshman and middle school shorts IF the coaches e-mail the info. i e-mailed back that the person should complain to the athletic director, superintendent or school board because we get zilch in cooperation from the douchebag coaches. and incidentally, the dui was an nfl player and i told the person maybe they should be disappointed in him for driving drunk, not the paper for covering it, which by the way, was a freakin year ago. and i love the part where the coaches are too busy.

Hey, how 'bout that JV state championship game last year?

 

[FishHack76]

No. No. No. No. No. No. and No. There's a time and place for coverage, and that time and place is VARSITY athletics. In most places, it's hard enough just to cover that.
Everything else is just like feeding bread crumbs to a group of pigeons. They'll always want more. If you do JV, they'll want sophomores. If you do sophomores, the freshmen parents will squawk then the middle school parents then the elementary school parents then parents of the 4 year old kids playing Tee ball but not keeping score.
I wish some stupid managing editors and publishers could get it through their fat heads, but they're too scared, too willing to cave in and don't have any other job skills for the working world.
I believe putting youth sports in the paper is part of a culture that leads to hockey parents bashing each other's heads on the floor. I'm being somewhat sarcastic, but it has made parents take the damn things way, way, way too seriously. It's a game played by children who should just be allowed to play and have fun and not have parents jacked up on Starbucks screaming at them, the coaches and the ref. JUST STFU and that goes double to those same parents at high school games. You're not part of the God-damn coaching staff so sit there quietly and drive the Expedition home.
If I were an editor, I would have no part of that, and I would spell it out. I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't lose that many readers IF you used that extra time wisely. That means finding more meaningful stories and content to put in the paper. I think there are a good portion of readers who look at the ULTRA-LOCAL paper and think of it as pure crap. Do I think local sports are important. Yes, but by local sports, I mean VARSITY ATHLETICS.
If your kid does something really, really, really special, maybe we would write a story, but it has to be a phenomenal. A certain threshold of coverage must be reached for it to be news. That's called news judgment. If you want something else, then post it on your own damn blog or send out Christmas cards with the family update and talk about little Johnny "working hard" while riding the bench.
Who cares if you work hard? Everybody works hard. Is it worth covering? Probably not. It's not newsworthy for a bunch of 8 year olds to run around kicking a God damn soccer ball. Yeah, they do it all over the damn country.
Coverage is not a God-given right. Getting your name in the paper is not part of the U.S. Constitution. They aren't giving college scholarships to 10 year olds based on our coverage. heck, there are kids that don't pick up a sport until varsity that get scholarships. Why? Because they were blessed with strength and athletic ability by the fallopian tubes of fortune.
This names thing only works to an extent. There's a paper that tries that around here. Yeah, it's cool the first few times, but its effect diminishes after a while. It's the law of diminishing returns.
The problem I've seen, especially with high school sports, is the same kids' names keep appearing because THEY'RE THE DAMN STARS of the team. It's not like the reporters go out of their way to get more names in the stories, and I don't blame them. They don't have that much room.
There are hundreds of newspapers that have tried this approach. I doubt many of them have seen their circulation grow because it isn't meaningful content. It's just filler.

 

[Fourth and 8]

Funniest call I ever got: after the football season preview (high school teams only) I had a lady ask "what kind of sports department do you think you are when you don't know to include pee wee football in that preview? You guys are a bunch of losers!"

 

[expendable]

It's good you got that call fourth and eight. If the publisher had gotten it, byou may be cranking out a Pee Wee football tab next year. I'm sure the ad guys would have an easier time selling that one. :

 

[RossLT]

20K daily we have to run a round up on some of the JV games because in the words of the ME "Our job is to get as many local names in the paper as possible."

 

[deskslave]

20K daily we have to run a round up on some of the JV games because in the words of the ME "Our job is to get as many local names in the paper as possible."

That's why they call it a namespaper, not a newspaper. Oh...wait.

I've probably posted this rant here before, but I'm gonna do it again. My impression of the way things were 20, 30, 40 years ago, and I wasn't there to see it, so I can't verify it, is that papers were a bit like medicine, or vegetables. We gave people what they needed, whether they liked it or not, and they took it, whether they liked it or not, because it was good for them. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to have an educated, expansive world view, because it takes effort. Now, though, the prevailing theme throughout corporate America is "the customer is always right," which may be the worst phrase ever invented by anybody, anywhere.

Our job is to get as many local names in the paper as possible. That's so sad it's ridiculous, and yet I know exactly what you're talking about. Except at my last paper, the theme was "names and faces." Of course, that led to the creation of a Spotted section on the Web site, where they run lots of pictures...with no names.

You would think at some point the novelty of having your name in the paper would wear off, and that that point would come around the seventh time your name appears in the roster of the U-10 soccer team.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

You should try reading some newspapers from 40 years ago.

Our paper, which was at least a 20K daily back then, was little more than a glorified society sheet.
I often comb through our archives looking for things and run into four-inch briefs strewn all over the paper regaling readers of Mr.and Mrs. Smith's daughter Winifred's weekend visit from Hillbilly U.
Or the announcement of Bumblefork West class of 1940 reunion.

We also had some real PC headlines back then... one from 1961 or '63 screamed (in 75 point head) 'Retard drowns at darn'

In '57 on of the front page sports stories was about a minor car accident that involved members of the Bumblefork's baseball team.

Newspapers were worse 40 years ago -without the internet and the information now age.

Newspapers from father back, the 50s,30s, and the turn of the century were more of the same. Society items and stories inerwoven with opinion.
One of our papers from the turn of the century has a "news item" about two single women caught riding in a buggy - after dark - in the company of two men.

 

[deskslave]

Hmm...yeah, I guess you're right. Of course, that was also before the days of modular design, so you could get, say, 15 or 20 stories on a page.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Absolutely!
Layout and design was non-existent.

 

[RossLT]

Yeah Deskslave, my ME manages to come up with a few gems that make me think he must have had revealing pics of someone. He has this idea that we should have the parents take pics at the state volleyball, track and other events. I mean we have two trained photogs here, they are just too cheap to send one.

 

[deskslave]

Yeah Deskslave, my ME manages to come up with a few gems that make me think he must have had revealing pics of someone. He has this idea that we should have the parents take pics at the state volleyball, track and other events. I mean we have two trained photogs here, they are just too cheap to send one.

Take state volleyball away from a photog? He's girding for a fight, he is.

(I keed, I keed...)

 

[RossLT]

They just want to go to anything