On his first week at the Galveston County News, Jordan Godwin tried to cover three high school basketball playoff games in one night. He went to one, sent a photographer to another and called two coaches while filing three stories by deadline.
After learning that was too much for one person, the next week he was able to send a copy editor to one game and get another story from another area newspaper.
After learning that was too much for one person, the next week he was able to send a copy editor to one game and get another story from another area newspaper.
Those are the type of lessons learned as papers deal with less resources and the same expectations from readers, as discussed at the APSE Southwest Region Meeting.
Since then, Godwin has advertised in his newspaper for help and is gathering a group of high school journalists to help cover high school football this fall. He’s brought them in to do trial stories and many will cover scrimmages this fall to practice taking statistics at a game for the first time.
The resource crunch has hit everywhere, including the Houston Chronicle, which has combined Texas and Texas A&M beat writers with the San Antonio Express-News and will head into the fall with one less prep reporter after Jenny Dial was promoted to High Schools Coordinator and her reporting position was not filled.
To combat that, papers are getting creative with resources. The Austin American-Statesman invites in 10 to 15 high school athletes at a time to get studio photos for future Q&As. The Waco Tribune-Herald invites all of its area football coaches and the five best players from each team to Baylor’s football field at the end of July for a photo day.
Herald Democrat (Sherman and Denton) Sports Editor Bill Spinks said that his two-person staff has decided to stay in the office and only take call-ins from basketball on Tuesday nights to ensure that they are able to print results from most of the paper’s nearly 30 high schools in its coverage area.
But, with no Saturday paper, they are able to cover Friday football and still get the information from most of the area’s games.
“Everyone is being asked to do more,” said Brad Lehman, Texas Sports Editor for Hearst Newspapers. “We have a lot of stringers who have to go from single-task people to multi-task people.”
