When sports editors take time to talk about their respective sections, we all tend to have the same answers to the two most basic questions concerning space.
This year, we have less than we did last year. Next year, we’ll probably have even less. So where do we go from there?
This was the subject of a session at the APSE Atlantic Coast regional meeting this month at the Raleigh News & Observer. I was joined by Baltimore Sun executive sports editor Ron Fritz and Newport News Daily Press sports editor Nick Mathews to lead a discussion on how to beef up your newspaper while dealing with diminishing news hole.
Fritz, whose seen the space in his section go down at as rapid of a pace as any metro daily in the country, said the Sun first had to make some tough decisions. Under the leadership of Fritz – and before that, the leadership of the late Tim Wheatley – the Sun realized some tough decisions had to be made and priorities had to be set.
What needed to be focalized? Fritz said for the Sun, No. 1 on the list had to be coverage of the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens’ rabid fans are always looking for news on their football team, and the Sun wants to be those fans’ destination point.
In print, there is always something in the sports section about the Ravens. Notebooks are published on nearly a daily basis. Q&As with team members are put together in advance and run on days that there is no team access.
On-line, the Sun is sponsoring weekly live chats with their beat writers. Blogs are updated regularly. And while the Sun’s overall staff has diminished, Fritz said the number of reporters charged with proving Ravens coverage is as high as its ever been.
At the team’s Nov. 1 home game with the Denver Broncos, six Sun reporters were in attendance. “What we (all) have to do is find out what the readers want,” Fritz said. “Our readers want the Ravens.”
This has become so important, that the section’s Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday editions all begin with “Ravens Weekend,” where they devote the first several pages on those days to the football team. Sun readers can even subscribe exclusively to those four editions, a move that has increased circulation by as much as 80,000 on some of those days.
Other beats considered priorities for the Sun include the Orioles, and University of Maryland sports. So what was lost? Well, quite a bit.
The Sun no longer runs horse racing results from Pimlico or or Laurel Park – a long-time tradition, but also a space eater. Also gone are roundups and boxscores from the NBA – other than the Washington Wizards — and NHL. Golf agate is limited to the top 10. The Sun also decided to discontinue having a beat writer for Navy football.
“You have to make hard decisions,” he said. “You have to figure out how your space is used.”
When it comes to dealing with less people to provide information, Fritz and Mathews said it’s important to be creative. At the Sun, the paper is beginning to share content with other newspapers. For the Ravens, the paper exchanges content with papers that cover that week’s opponents. For some of the beats that are no longer covered in house, the Sun is now sharing content with papers such as long-time rival, The Washington Post.
Mathews said he tried another approach to acquiring more coverage. Instead of replacing a departing reporter last year, he took the money budgeted to pay for a full-time reporter and greatly increased his stringer budget.
“So instead of one new reporter, I have many reporters that are really from all over the country,” he said.
N&O and Charlotte Observer senior sports editor Gary Schwab made several other points during the discussion, many of which concerned how a sports team should decide what needs to be in its paper. While some are obvious, don’t assume you know what your readers want.
For instance, Schwab said soccer coverage in the Raleigh area had always been limited, but had access to an intern last year whose only job was to write about soccer in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area.
As it turned out, the coverage was popular with readers. Even after the intern left, soccer coverage lived on.
While the Internet will likely be the dominant source of breaking news and game coverage, newspapers still have an edge in enterprise and analysis. Make sure those stories are being written. Storytelling is a newspaper’s other strength. Don’t ever forget that.
