Be thankful for your local coverage

I would like all the teams in this year's tourney, especially from western NC, to know how lucky you are to have local radio and newspapers care about what you and your legion team are doing.

After qualifying for the state tournament with a record of 28-8, and finishing 4th in the state, The Durham Herald Sun was nice enough to give Durham Post 7 1"x1.5" boxscore in today's paper, under the title "Recreation", mentioning their 16-5 win over Garner, and their 6-2 loss to Caldwell. No player's names, stats, or final record were mentioned, nor was anyone from the paper willing to make the long journey from Durham to Garner to cover the event.

Be thankful for what you have as far as interest in your teams go.

 

You are preaching to the choir. I live in Raleigh and follow Wayne County. The Goldsboro paper almost always gives the team front page coverage and staffs most games. We had a photographer in Garner. They get the other games from my blog. New Bern, Rocky Mount and Wilson are pretty good.

But the Durham, Raleigh and Triad papers are a joke.

 

It is the same in areas around Charlotte. Folks in big cities are more concerned with their paper being a regional paper and they believe folks are only interested in the Panthers or NASCAR. There is a local section in the Charlotte paper, but your right, its mostly boxscores. I think the writeups have increased in recent years, but its still nowhere close to the coverage you get when you get out into the small towns.

When you get out into smaller communities, the legion coverage is simply more major news, because the smaller communities are just closer. Of course everyone knows about Rowan County and their newspaper and 2 radio stations, but actually many of the legion teams in this area who are in smaller towns get good newspaper coverage, a couple others have radio coverage.

Hang in there, I guess the best advice I could give someone who's not satisfied with their media coverage is try to do something about it. Contact them more, and try to make them feel a part of the team. Its entirely possible that the newspaper folks in your area simply are not familiar with local stuff because they have the Panthers crammed up their behinds. They may look forward to giving you more coverage. Offer them free hotdogs at your games,,, that always works.

 

I have to give kudos to the staff at the Monroe Enquirer-Journal. Anything local takes precedence over all other sports. From High School to Legion and even the Jr. Legion gets front page (usually 1/4th page) along with color pics. They miss a few of our games but it's only because they're short staffed and try to give everyone equal billing. When they do miss they ask the coaches to call in and they write an article based on that. I've been able to put together a hefty scrapbook over the last few years that I hope to show the grandkids one day.

 

Won't promote ourselves on this board, but we are trying to fill that exact gap, and always willing talk to people about ways we can improve our coverage. This link is our Garner coverage - which did include Durham games ; )

http://www.localreplay.com/events.php?eventid=2

 

As many of you know, I had a blog for Wayne County this season and plan to do it again. I wanted to let it be a central pace where fans and teams could go for Area I East scores and maybe details on games. I couldn't make the spring meeting, so I had the commissioner pitch it to the teams.

The response was disappointing to say the least. Only Pitt 39 regularly sent me its scores. According to the commish, the people at the meeting hemmed and hawed about it and would not committ.

Next year, Rudy Coggins of the Goldsboro News-Argus and I are going to make a more concerted effort along these lines. Maybr we'll bypass the old fuddy duddies and the coaches and get some fans to help us. Standings are very difficult to come by around here.

 

I believe that may be the best way.