Baseball Question for Charlotte Observer readers?

I wonder what they are thinking over there. On Saturday they gave a huge space and coverage to a 47-44 softball game between West Charlotte and Vance and called it an outstanding game (back & forth on the score). In reality, neither team could play the game as evidenced by the fact that 91 runs were scored on only 30 hits. One team walked 22 and committed almost that many errors. Anyone that knows anything about baseball or softball knows that was an very painful game to watch as it was butchered with walks and errors and I'm sure countless other misplays.

 

True but when it's football season they always have plenty of manpower and space.

 

And basketball season...

 

No Justice

I played college baseball in N.C. In high school as a pitcher I was 10-1 as a senior. The 1 loss was in State playoffs and we lost 1-0. My ERA was .50 with 110 K's. I did get a partial scholarship to what was then NAIA school. I received exactly 1 letter from a college expressing interest. Fastball was 90-91 tops. The reason I'm sort of tooting my own horn is this- there was absolutely no press from the Observer. I still believe to this day had I lived in Charlotte ( I do live in coverage area) I probably would have been a major college recruit. I played with guys in high school on my team that were way better than a lot of my college teammates. I think it is such an injustice to high school baseball players the amount of coverage they have gotten in the Observer for many, many, many years. It's a life changer where a kid goes to college for some. If high school kids have a coach that doesn't "work" college coaches and flood them with letters and stats- word of mouth is the only publicity he receives because it sure won't be read by college scouts in the Observer. I give them an F on baseball coverage in Western NC. If you notice, most of their stories come off the wire- real tough job. Get off you lazy butts and help our kids get in college!!

 

Maybe a "centerfold" spread of area coaches? Lacrosse coaches people, not baseball!!!

 

Saturday's Observer edition had a high school roundup section. As usual is should be the Southwest Conference baseball round-up

 

Tried to get to so some of this in the other thread. In spring, we have many sports and a lot of ground to cover. We have also made a big effort this year to spread out baseball coverage. It seems people are missing it somehow.

 

2 or 3 years ago South Caldwell and East Rutherford were playing each other in the Shelby Easter tournament. I believe they were both nationally ranked at the time. The CO gave the game zero coverage. I e-mailed Langston Wertz about it and his reply was fans need to let them know when such a game is being played. ??????? Had that been say, Indy and Butler in football.........
How many weeks are we into baseball season and they still have a pre-season Sweet 16? That's it. No updates, whereas football and basketball are updated weekly.

I do need to know when these games are being played. I am trying to follow 125 schools x 8-9 sports in springs. I can't possibly know every big game. Another thing, being a regional paper, we have to try to present coverage that is going to have a wide impact. Covering a baseball game between two teams from small towns may be of interest to those in that town, but to most of our circulation it's not as big an issue.

We cover Charlotte teams because we are in Charlotte. I'm not sure we can ever sufficiently cover non-Charlotte teams on day-to-day coverage to satisfy anyone. I think our role is more like Sports Illustrated, to come in and shine a bigger light on our towns and teams.

That said if there's a great talent or great story at those two schools, I'd love to tell that story. It would be much more well-read amongst our entire coverage area. I could tell you that a Shelby vs. East Rutherford game running in our city edition would leave a lot of Mecklenburg prep readers scratching their head and going, 'Why?'

 

If people want to contact the Observer to try to bring about some change, you need to aim high (all the way to the top). Most newspaper people believe they support balance and fairness and that is what this is about. Langston Wertz and Cliff (wherever he went) won't push for change while they are trying to not be the victims of the next cutback.

Did anyone notice how the Observer went overboard to promote girls basketball over boys basketball for the entire season?....girls boxscores first all season, big feature stories with pictures of a 48-42 girls game and smaller stories and no pictures from the big boys game on the same day. Boys coverage picked up late in the season. Just runaway political correctness, I guess.

Langston has a nice sweet 16 pre-season video report with team by team analysis by Danny Hignight and Hal Bagwell on the observer website (prep insiders, I think)

I don't think we went overboard to promote anything over anything else. I plan our prep coverage and have for years. My editors long ago placed that trust in me. I'm grateful for it.

We are trying to cover all of our high school sports. These are special times for these young men and women. I know one of my big weaknesses early in my career was my blind spots. I would just write about and cover the big winners. We'd ignore the programs that weren't doing so well. I've learned over the years that it means a lot that we show up at one of those games every now and then and what I try to do is hit those schools early in the year, knowing when the playoffs come and coverage ramps up, those schools likely won't be playing.

People tend to remember what they saw last: us doing a lot of basketball coverage because the games really mattered and we had girls teams going deep into the playoffs, but if you take what we did in total, I felt it was pretty balanced.

You asked about Cliff. Unfortunately, he's no longer with us. I miss him.

 

I find it hard to believe that the lack of coverage is due to not enough man power at the observer. Im a coach of a J.V high school program and scores are sent in every night after games by myself and the varsity coach and we cant even get as much as a box score entered on most nights. So when information is given that could be copy and pasted into an article, I find it hard to believe that man power is the issue.....Also, a players parents wrote an e-mail to one of the sports writers at the observer; I wont state his name, and asked why Lake Norman Baseball could'nt get any coverage or atleast box scores in the paper, the reporter wrote back and his only response was that the Mooresville Tribune didnt cover any Charlotte teams so why should CO cover Lake Norman?????How ever, like stated in earlier post basketball received coverage and if my memory serves me well, Lake Norman won The State Championship. I lost alot of respect for this reporter after hearing of that statement, so much for being in a customer service profession.

We have never run junior varsity box scores and have long told schools this. We cannot cover jv or junior high. It's Pandora's box for us.

We do print the boxscores that are given to us, but some schools do not report as well as others. People often complain we are intentionally ignoring their school. No, their school is not always getting information to us. Also we created an online tool this year for schools to use that would generate stats, standings and more. We did pretty well in football, better in basketball and fell off the mountain in spring.

I've seen how well this thing works when the schools use it. Perhaps next year.

As for the email that was sent to me, you've got it a bit wrong. I was asked why doesn't the CO cover Lake Norman the same way we do local schools. I said we can't cover regional schools the same as those in Mecklenburg. Most regional schools, like LKN, have papers that cover them, many of them daily papers and in some cases there's more than one.

Mecklenburg doesn't have that. Plus we are a Charlotte entity. We have a responsibility to do right by those schools, I think.

We do and have always run LKN box scores when they are phoned into us. We have given LKN loads of coverage in football, basketball and spring sports, too. We'll continue to do so when warranted.