The Z word in preps: Zoning

[publicenemy]

we have a pretty serious zoning initiative going on here. it's about to filter its way into prep sports in the fall.

i'm looking for info from papers of 150K + who zone preps or have zoned preps in the past. some of our zone managing editors treat prep sports as crucial to what they publish. others have almost ignored it. we've devised a plan that will have individual-zone content four days a week, but what we're trying to deal with is what to do on friday nights. deadlines are really tough and the idea of zoning friday night football coverage makes me a bit queasy. we were pushing it pretty good on friday nights without zoning and now our deadlines are actually worse than they were. i'm not sure the production end can move all those pages and i'm not sure we can get all the copy in.

i'm sure it's probably being done somewhere. what i'm looking for is info from people who have done it to try to pick their brains a bit.

any help is appreciated. private messages are fine too if you don't want to get a long string started on here. it probably doesn't affect too many SportsJournalists.com-ites.

 

[BaysideTiger]

Enemy, check your PM.

 

[Columbo]

Where I used to work, we'd have about 38 games on a Friday night (22 in our first zone)

We had a half-hour turnaround.

If you want to PM me about your logistics, I can let you know if my experience is applicable to what you will be going through.

 

[Editude]

Lots of experience in this. Check your PM.

 

[Beach_Bum]

Zone about 20-25 games each Friday. Do three high school section fronts.
Send me a PM on some of your particulars and I'll try to help.

 

[SF_Express]

I started to write some sage advice on this from my last job where I dealt a lot with preps, and we had four zones, some leaving the floor at the same time and completely different from edition to edition.

Then it occurred to me this was nine years ago, before that paper paginated, and it involved what are likely some pretty arcane notions.

In other words, never mind. :