BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — For the second straight year a question-and-answer session with Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive and associate commissioner Charles Bloom highlighted the APSE Southeast Region meeting.
The subject quickly turned to reporter access for interview time with coaches and players.
The two biggest issues came from beat writers in SEC cities and the fact that they are often bypassed or not given at least equal access to the national writers.
One reason mentioned as to why access is limited was coaches and athletic directors often think everything that is going to be written is negative.
Bloom said he would revisit a 10-point plan he created for media access and streamline it to redistribute to the ADs and coaches for their approval.
Slive also suggested the conference create a different credentialing category and give better access to the beat writers.
Slive said the best way to solve the problem was "to get (the coaches, ADs and media) in a room and get to the middle," and he vowed to try to get that done.
Other items Slive commented on were:
Cam Newton: At this point, Slive is unaware of any conclusion of the case regarding the former Auburn quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner.
Bruce Pearl: Slive said he acted on the Tennessee coach's situation when all the facts were in. He gave the situation its due process and based on Pearl’s violation of conference policy he suspended him for half of the SEC basketball season.
Slive also said he talked with Pearl before and after the investigation. Slive added that after the conversations, his relationship with Pearl has not changed.
Slive and Bloom will also check into lifting stringent rules on recording video of Olympic sports for local media to use on its Websites.
Other sessions from the meeting included:
Rusty Hampton of the Jackson Clarion Ledger, John Zenor of the Associated Press and Mike Szvetitz of the Opelika-Auburn News discussing the Cam Newton story and how each news outlet covered it.
A common theme was how the majority of their stories were reactionary.
Hampton said he had the story a month before it broke, but could not get the people he needed to talk to him to confirm it. A key figure in the Jackson end was John Bond who had talked to the NCAA. Hampton finally caught up with Bond but was turned away. However, Bond was more than willing to talk to ESPN.
That was a similar situation Zenor and Szvetitz found. No one involved with the story would talk to the local reporters, only the national outlets. Szvetitz also gave Auburn credit as the entire university staff did a great job in keeping their mouths shut.
However, Hampton, Zenor and Szvetitz said each learned a valuable lesson while covering the story.
Hampton said if this kind of story happens again, he would better utilize staff from other departments.
Zenor said better planning for the short staff would have alleviated the pressure "to feed the beast" and give continual updates even though there might not be any new information to report.
Szvetitz said he saw a significant drop in other local coverage because his small staff was continually covering the Newton story.
Tommy Deas sports editor and Edwin Stanton a lead designer from the Tuscaloosa News talked about their successful 16-page live football tab they ran every Friday night during high school football season.
Deas said he learned about the idea at the summer convention from Paul Skrbina, preps editor of the Chicago Tribune, who had done a similar tab when he was with the Sauk Valley (Ill.) Newspapers.
When Deas returned to Tuscaloosa he made a mock copy of a potential tab and presented the idea.
In the end, it brought new ad revenue streams to the paper and all the space was sold prior to the season.
Twelve issues were budgeted and it was printed as a full color tab.
Deas said there were a couple of tradeoffs. The main sports section had to be off the floor by 8:30 p.m. and any late sports action that was necessary for publication (World Series, Braves playoff games) was put into the A section.
The overall process turned out to be beneficial all the way around. It was easier to design pages because all stories were limited to 325 or 400 words, which made it easier to edit. Stories were limited to the confines of each individual page, which eliminated the need for jumps.
The pages had a consistent design week to week and it allowed more games to be covered.
Jon Johnson of the Dothan Eagle and Mike Szvetitz of the Opelika-Opelika News spoke on the issues facing them with their media company — Media General — going to a consolidated desk.
The Dothan and Auburn papers are designed by people in Hickory N.C., who lay out various papers for the group.
That makes for many anxious moments for Johnson and Szvetitz and they find there is very little time or energy saved by the consolidation effort.
Each day Johnson and Szvetitz prepare a detailed page-by-page budget of what the page should look like and when stories will be available.
One of the most detailed aspects is the agate page with television listings, glances, briefs and local scoreboards.
Once pages are completed, in Hickory, a PDF is sent back to Dothan and Auburn to be proofed.
Issues arise when notes of corrections to be made are returned and those corrections are either missed or ignored. The sports editors have to speak with the designer’s supervisor and hope it is dealt with properly to correct the mistakes so they do not happen again.
The fundamental flaw with the consolidated desk is the lack of local knowledge on the designing end.
Deadlines never changed going to the consolidated desk, but the papers are consistently an hour late.
But both Johnson and Szvetitz said pages do look better.
Phil Kaplan of the Knoxville News-Sentinel talked about how the paper tackled National Signing Day and its new relationship working with 24/7 Sports, a national recruiting website, to better cover recruiting for the News-Sentinel readers.
The partnership formed in December when the paper was looking for an additional revenue stream.
24/7 hired two reporters to cover Tennessee recruiting and their stories not only appeared on the subscription-recruiting site, but could also be used in the News-Sentinel.
With the aid of 24/7, Kaplan said the paper was able to plan a blowout recruiting section for National Signing Day, both in the paper and online.
In print, the News-Sentinel did an eight-page special section that included all the local signees, all the SEC signing classes and local, regional and national recruiting news.
Online, the coverage started at 5:50 a.m. on Signing Day.
As players signed, their name was added to the list and each had their own recruiting page.
On their pages were headshots, provided by 24/7 a bio of each player and a video of the News-Sentinel reporters spelling out the strengths of each signee.
In addition, they had a live chat from 7 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., which had up to 1,500 people at any one time.
During the day, Kaplan said there were 1.3 million page views, including 122,000 on the main story.
