Baseball coverage, how are we doing?

Sure we have our biases, but we strive to cover all schools and all sports equally. We have to be Meck-first. In the old days we had a reporter that covered non-Meck schools solely. Now we're down to just me. I do roundups and Gamedays and include many of the teams in them that you are talking about here. Is it a headline story? No. But are these teams getting good run in our paper? Yeah. And again, those Gamedays and Roundups are often top 5 hit stories for the sports section on that given day.

I write one story about Providence and it's a gusher? They were nationally ranked and starting playoffs. Who should I write about? That was as good as any, don't you think?

In swimming season we will cover teams doing well. North Meck and Hough and Providence have done well. We will cover them. In spring, Hough soccer and Hough baseball doing well. We cover them. We covered lacrosse and track and all other spring sports to completion. Same with Meck baseball.

And the night Providence lost, we had them in Roundup twice as an "elevator down" and a short on the loss. We didn't plan to cover that game, figuring, like many of you, that the 'Dence would win.

If you all are reading online (and shame on you for not reading the printed product -- smile), make sure to click High School Gameday and High School Roundup. A lot of your complaints, or at least the voracity of them, might subside a little.

 

Jerry and his staff do a wonderful job. They cover only Union County. You won't get mad at them for not covering Providence or write that they should cover Ardrey Kell more b/c AK is as close to their offices as is Piedmont.

We're in a different boat and it's hard but again, we use the Roundups and Gamedays to try to cover more ground.

 

Yes, papers are struggling to sell printed product. Online numbers are staggeringly strong. Problem is trying to convert eyeballs to print-level dollars. That's the trick and no one has figured it out yet. A bigger problem was giving y'all content for free years ago online. Now y'all expect it.

My guess? In the next few years, more papers, like Enquirer Journal and Hickory Record, will go pay-for-play. Eventually most news sources will, or least partially go there.

As for big-city newspapers struggling with local, I don't know. I think we do a great job with Mecklenburg, at least as well as any smaller paper does with their primary county. Where I see most complaints is "Why don't you cover Richmond County football every week" or along those lines. Like the Weddington baseball stuff on this blog.

It's a tough job to figure out how to handle area teams doing well when a gazillion local/core/county teams are doing well, too. I think the Roundups are a good model for us, but I think we've got to figure out a better way to show what we're doing online.

What happens is the headline says "High School Roundup" online and may contain Weddington baseball, Porter Ridge softball, etc, but online readers are looking for specific headlines.

That's a head scratchin' toughie for ol' Wertz.

 

1 down, I have felt that way especially about TV coverage and it's one of the reasons I'm in the biz. I wanted to find good positive stories about youth and present them on a daily basis. For 24 years, I've tried to do that. Our section has been filled throughout baseball season with a plethora of stories like that. It seems as though you have not seen any of them. We had three pages of positive high school coverage two Sundays ago, two pages last Sunday, yet you still right that we don't recognize the good.

I don't get it.

 

Pirates, really? Hough and Mallard Creek was splashed all over the front page of the paper and the website. We have a 20-something picture slideslow. We covered every game of Hough's regional final series with photo and front page coverage. We had a baseball game on the front page, with art, for every round of the playoffs.

Wow. I mean, just wow.

 

Langston, wasnt trying to be sarcastic , just voicing my opinion. I believe if you would go back and look at the print you would see what i am talking about. The slide show is good but the old farts like me would prefer to see pictures and print. Keep doing what you are doing because any press that baseball gets is good. Soccer is the sport that was on the front and middle pages.

 

The Hough ladies soccer team beat the ESPN #1 ranked ladies soccer team in the nation for a State Chamionship title last weekend, and the men's baseball team is playing for their first State Championship title this weekend. It has been an exciting time to be a fan of the Hough Huskies!

Langston, your coverage of our school in the post season has been terrific. Thank you!

 

I disagree wholeheartedly on the EJ. Snow and his cronies are only interested in appeasing the Jones/Webb crowd. The spring coverage on the western side of the county is done solely by a young stringer, who does a pretty bang up job. However, Jerry has no interest in how his coverage manifests, much less doing it right. It was 100 times better in the days of Steve Behr (who is now covering Watauga and App up in Boone). Hopefully, soon the EJ won't be able to run half-page ads on the front page of the sports because they will have finally gone out of business.

There's no question that Langston does the best best he can with the many schools in that circulation area, but to say the EJ does a good job? That's a stretch.

 

I was always told, to get better, you learn from the best. A few years ago, I began reading some of the papers of the out of conference teams we were playing and IMO the Salisbury Post is one of the best local newspapers when it comes to baseball coverage. Maybe it was because they had the powerhouses of East Rowan, West Rowan and Carson etc. to cover. Their articles (and photos) were awesome. When we defeated a Salisbury team in the playoffs last year, they even interviewed the winning AND losing teams. I have noticed the EJ only talks to the winning team in most cases and very rarely gives props to the opposing players even if they did have a stellar game.

It is a shame, but for every game there is a winner and a loser and it doesn't mean either team gave a lesser effort. If you want to sell more papers, spread the love. There are teams in our county that NEVER get writeups but does that mean they don't spend an equal amount of time practicing and preparing for each game. I sort of doubt it. Baseball has alwasy taken a back seat to football and usually even basketball. If you commit to the big schools you usually get the big recognition. But for now, I say we all should be proud of the job Preston Morrison is doing at TCU and All get behind Weddington High School to go win a State Championship. Union County has been loaded with some pretty good athletes and no matter what coverage they get, I will still buy the newspaper - just in case!!!

 

I see them. I think it's great. That's what HS sport stories should be like. I think when you do write about it, you do a bang up job. My mother in law also saw a nice story about a softball team from Cary, NC. Nothing against Softball, but Cary? That's a long way from downtown Charlotte.

I understand the Observer has limited people to follow stories. I also believe the staff to track the police scanner is larger than the local sports section. My comment was directed at the fact that had one of "W"'s players been arrested, somebody from the Observer would have found their way to Weddington to interview somebody.

However, there is a VERY LIMITED number of HS teams that are still practicing. As many have noted, most of the local teams in all spring sports were beat early. I personally never complained when "W" beat the Meck Co teams and I didn't see a blurb about it in the Observer. It would seem reasonable that at some point, a story about possibly the best team in the area would be written.