By Jeff Arnold, jarnold@shawmedia.com
CHICAGO — Jeff Kuehn considers himself an old-school sports editor who, until 2009, put priority on the Oakland (Mich.) Press’ print product rather than on web hits and page views.
But with his newspaper’s circulation (48,000 daily, 65,000 Sunday) nearly half of what it was in its heyday when it reached 125,000, Kuehn has changed the way he approaches business, especially when it comes to high school sports coverage.
Between the Journal-Register-owned Oakland Press and the eight communities its papers serve around metro Detroit, Kuehn oversees coverage of nearly 200 schools. While the paper has daily beat writers on the city’s four pro beats, Kuehn has turned his attention to owning prep coverage through the company’s high school sports site, MiPrepZone.com.
“The days of people waiting (for preps coverage) and picking up the morning paper are long gone,” Kuehn said at the APSE Great Lakes Region meeting in Chicago.
MiPrepZone.com and its eight home pages attract 3 million page views a month, reeling viewers in with coverage of every high school sport and with up to 50 videos a week.
Reporters, who mostly work on a freelance basis, provide up-to-the-minute updates for a live scoreboard updated every 20 minutes.
The paper’s reporters carry digital flip cameras, capturing video that is embedded with every story. In addition, the site – overseen by editor Jason Schmitt – has a presence on social media networks along with blogs that Kuehn said is giving the site a statewide presence.
He has used community workshops to recruit writers, some of which become frequently used stringers.
There are also live chats from game that has caused the site’s Friday night traffic to explode, where once readers waited for results in Saturday’s paper.
“We don’t need the daily paper to be our main form of communication anymore,” Kuehn said.
