Poll: Running feature stories submitted by SIDs

[SoloFlyer]

To clarify, there is no money involved. This would be a feature story written by an SID or someone at the university for publication on their website, university magazine, game program, etc., that was offered to run in your section as well.

It's a massive conflict of interest. The writer has a paid incentive to make the athlete look good rather than tell the objective truth.

 

[SoloFlyer]

If the options were running a SID feature or nothing at all, would you take nothing at all?

Nothing at all. I'd print every last inch of wire copy before accepting an SID feature. Failing that, I'll plaster house ads all over the section.

You say your budget got slashed. So did everyone else's. It sucks, and the resulting stress sucks, too. But I bet you can scrape together $50 from your budget every so often to get a freelancer who doesn't have a conflict of interest to pitch in.

Tap local college communications programs, even if there isn't a journalism school there. The kids will be happy to do a story between classes for beer/pizza money and get a real byline.

 

[SoloFlyer]

Some sports journalists can actually become SID's? Wow. You wouldn't know it around here... every ad basically says "experience in a sports information office is REQUIRED!" Never mind I've essentially been doing the same thing most SID's have... lol

Back on topic... we do not run SID copy in the print edition, but our shop has an agreement with the colleges around the area to maintain a presence on our website. (We are an Advance shop, BTW.)

What does that agreement entail? And what's described as "maintaining a presence on our website"?

 

[steveu]

The answers to some of those questions are above my pay grade, Solo. lol

Still, I'll try it... in a nutshell, the colleges send in their press releases and they run on the address for our website earmarked for "small colleges". We do cover occasional college events, including football and basketball games, and we also do certain features.

As far as SID's writing these features, that doesn't happen. Many times an SID will let us know about a player or a team with an interesting angle and one of our writers will take care of it.

 

[PaperDoll]

We have a weekly roundup of college accomplishments by local alumni culled from hundreds of school websites around the country. What's the difference between compiling all those painfully boring two-liners and editing down a longer piece as a lede?

Our EE and SE have been totally on board with that.

 

[JimmyHoward33]

Not trying to pick a fight here, but why isn't it right? I used to think exactly along those same lines, but then I had my staff shred to pieces, my budget slashed to next to nothing, and more and more responsibility shoved down my throat. If some SID on the other side of the state does a decent feature on a local athlete and offers it to me for use in my newspaper, I'm running it. I'm making sure it's known that the SID wrote it, but I'm still running it. A local-boy-does-good feature is going to read pretty much the same if an SID writes it or a staff member writes it.

As mentioned above, its a massive conflict of interest.

Now, the thing about standards is they only matter if your boss thinks they matter and if you can sleep at night. So if your publisher and editor don't care and you're burnt out to the point of not caring, there's no J-School police that are going to come for you and most readers won't be any the wiser.

But it's still wrong in the pure sense of what this thing is supposed to be.

 

[eddie.johnson]

As a sportswriter-turned SID-turned sports editor, I chop down and run gamers from the local SID. But if there's a kid-done-good feature there (or any local kid at any university, near or far), we handle that ourselves. I would never consider running an SID feature for all the reasons stated above.

In my former life as SID, it was my stated goal to make our website and social media platforms the one-stop-shop for news, features, photos and video of the university. Getting coverage from the local paper was nice, but it wasn't necessary.

 

[Doc Holliday]

To clarify, there is no money involved. This would be a feature story written by an SID or someone at the university for publication on their website, university magazine, game program, etc., that was offered to run in your section as well.

To clarify my previous answer, not a snowball's chance in heck.

 

[daytonadan1983]

From the Sports Information side, or the dark side, or whatever you want to call it these days.

Listen, we get it. Billy Sixty's situation is pretty much the same as our nearby shop -- my former shop.

My bottom line these days is getting the word out about my student athletes to as many people as people. Yes, I have a web site and several social media platforms, but my audience isn't completely the shop's audience...so, we do what we can. We accept that the face you're barely showing up at 50 percent of our events because the higher pay grade deems weekend OT frivolous. Stringer budget? Yeah.

So for gamers, I send an optional and my second or third best piece of art so you don't have the same content I do. I follow up to make sure all the stuff we do send you does gets in when the news side or the centralized desk is running sports that night.

[We allow ourselves a smile when the stories we submit are the most popular on the shop's websites the next day, btw]

The other day, I'm annoyed that I only get a brief about both my tennis teams -- one of them is defending conference champion -- getting the No. 1 seed at the conference tournament and the first-ever sweep of men's and women's player of the year while some prep team that lost 4-0 in the state semis got 300 words. I call the friendly neighborhood assistant sports editor, pull the "I get more coverage in a foreign country than I do in my own backyard" card (which is true because my No. 1 women's player is from Japan and her dad is awesome. That's right -- a parent story that isn't a horror story.) and say you want a 350-word preview with art? Write it just like I did back in the day, the shop posts online and runs some of it in print, and we all get what we want.

And when the friendly neighbor assistant sports editor thanks me and reminds me about his lack of manpower and resources, I again smile because I cranked out that 350-word b--- on the bus ride back to the hotel...

 

[daytonadan1983]

From the sports information side, part 2.

Last year, I partnered with the local shop and it turned out pretty good.

It was the 50th anniversary of the greatest individual basketball game in our history -- a guy dropped 60 and pulled down 40 rebounds in a conference tournament semifinals. In 1965, he got a whole three paragraphs worth of coverage.

So I did my pitch, said "this is what I'm doing and here's everything you need -- all the records, all the photos and all the contact info -- to do a deep dive." Sports Editor loved it, ran with it, added a second side bar on another great player (who just happened to be John Chaney) and it turned out to be a heck of a front page commemorative. My web site story and their coverage -- we linked to each other that day -- complimented each other well.

Basketball team was leaving on a road trip that. I could tell it worked when the current basketball coach showed up at the airport with a copy of the paper.

 

[Fredrick]

Difference between a GOOD sports editor and a bean counting, yes man managing editor. SE would NEVER run a feature from a sports information outlet of a school. Bean counter/clueless managing editor would think it's a GREAT idea. "You can always re-write a few sentences or two. We get the copy for free?? Run it."

 

[albert77]

When I was at the newspaper, we did it, without hesitation. Good writing is good writing and a good story is a good story, regardless of the source. We didn't have enough staff to turn down good well-written stories from the colleges (to be fair, neither the D-1 school nor the NAIA school in town sent features, just the jucos maybe 3-4 times a year).

Now that I'm in the SID side, my view is I'm going to offer stories (gamers, briefs and features) with art to all of my usual media outlets, including the college's website, anyway. Run it if you want; don't run it if you don't want. Once I hit the send button, what you do with it is out of my hands. If nothing ever gets run in a particular newspaper, I'll look into it, but I'm not getting bent if my soccer feature didn't run in your paper.