Newspaper coverage

Is this as sore a subject with anyone else out there as it is with me? We are from the Greensboro area and our local newspaper just gives baseball the mimimum coverage possible. During the fall we would devote 2 to 3 pages of Saturdays paper to high school football. Everyone knew about every yard the kid from Ragsdale gained, every week! If you read enough you would know most of the linemens names and what kind or music they liked. These 2 to 3 pages of coverage were many times the first pages of the sports page. Included would be articles, photos, and conference standings on teams that were a stretch from Greensboro, 2 to 3 county radius. Along came basketball, same format. Never a week complete without an article on Dudley basketball.
Now don't get me wrong, I loved it! I think these kids deserved all the exposure they got. I praised our sports writers for giving these prep players this first class ink. Being a sports fan I loved reading about our local high school players. Now I was looking for this same kind of coverage for the baseball season. NOT! Our baseball scores are printed in a small section on the 5th. page in the smallest font possible. I have never seen a conference standing. There has been 1 or 2 photos spotted but they were to let everyone know that baseball season has started,not that we were giving it any serious coverage. I don't understand it. Our sports department does a great job on covering golf tournaments in Hawaii, bicycle races in France, yaucht races in Austrailia, and tennis tournaments in England. I know more about some guy trying to earn his tour card than any high school pitcher in the city. Do other cities ignore high school baseball like ours do? Anyone else out there feel my frustration?

 

The newspapers get their "feeds" from outside sources and most don't really have local sports reporters anymore. Most HS coverage is spotty at best in all sports.

Baseball doesn't draw huge crowds, so it's not going to be covered. Down in Charlotte, you may get the box scores, but the papers try to find "human interest" stories that may appeal to a broad range of readers. They don't follow sports stories at all.

You're only luck anymore in finding decent HS coverage is to find a local paper who only has a couple of HS at most in their distribution area. They seem to do a great job. Too bad, because large population centers will be "unserved".

The Observer doesn't do a good job, but in fairness to them, I don't know if a lot of their readers care.

 

Newspaper coverage for baseball....

Most newspapers do a better job covering football because its a bigger audience, plain and simple. As far as baseball coverage, I personally think it simply depends upon the area you live in. I agree with NCBBALLFAN that the Charlotte Observer seems to simply spend all their energy on national stories, with maybe only 1-2 pages devoted to local sports (mostly final scores or boxscores). On the other hand, a small rural county like Rowan eats, breathes and sleeps local high school/legion baseball, so their paper (The Salisbury Post) does an excellent job in local baseball coverage.

SS-05, I hate to tell you this, but I have a feeling that Greensboro is simply more like Charlotte (big-city wise) and the paper folks simply either don't know much or don't care about baseball in your area because its not a big attendance ticket. I know last summer when Kannapolis played Greensboro in the Area 3 finals, we had huge articles in our local papers (both The Salisbury Post and The Independent Tribune did a super job locally), we also had a great crowd when the series moved here to Kannapolis,,,,, but I could never find anything except a final score in the Greensboro paper, and (at the same time) as good as your legion team was, your home crowd was pitiful too. We (Ktown) had more fans at Ragsdale than your home team,,,, and it was for the FRIGGING AREA 3 CHAMPIONSHIP!!!! I can only assume that the lack of fan attendance in your specific area is due to "zero" media coverage, because (here in Kannapolis) I've had numerous "old" baseball fans come out to the legion games because they got interested following the team in the paper. Media coverage can really help attendance at the games,,,,, and of course, winning helps too.

There's no doubt that good media coverage can help local high school/legion baseball teams at the gate. If you want to make things better, instead of doing nothing, I would challenge you "big-city" guys to find someone on your "big-city newspaper sportstaff" and befriend him. Establish contact and create an interest where the newspaper staff "WANTS" to come out and cover your games. Show the newspaper that there's an interest and I bet they will come out to cover your games. But at the same time if there's not much interest in terms of fanbase, then the newspaper probably won't come back,,,sorry.

Btw, I "DID" read a very good article on North Meck a few weeks ago in the Observer, (I honestly think the Observer tries),,,,, they just need to do more.

 

I agree with everything stated. We have had Langston with Charlotte Observer on many times and he has addressed this from their standpoint. The problem with local sports in the Charlotte Observer is it is not a local paper. They think of themselves as a regional paper.

We (baseball people) have done a great job in keeping the Observer notified about the HS scene in Charlotte. ...and they have done a decent job, recently...better than years past. It's probably a good time to invite him back on the board to answer some questions. He's a great guy and wants to do a good job....and he is always ready to listen to good ideas

 

Newspapers are relics of a bygone era. The internet is the future. Just like we've got "This Board Rocks" to post all kinds of information about our High School and Legion baseball teams you can create your own website to post information about your teams. That's what I've done for R.J. Reynold's High School: www.eteamz.com/rjr-baseball-backers-2005

I guess what we need next is a communal type website where representatives from each team could post an article about their team's games along with pictures and box scores and statistics. That way everything would be in one place. Or, at the very least one site with links to each team's website.

You can't expect newspapers to cover all of the local sports anymore - there are too many of them. So we've got to cover them ourselves and make them available to anyone who's interested in following the teams.

 

rjr:

I agree with you. But anyone who has ever visited a message board knows what kind of a mess it can be if it isn't moderated. A lot of our folks visit here, at NCPreps and at Charlotte.com and the differences are apparent.

You need a central person to handle it, make sure the links all work, some people writing articles, etc. It can be good, but it will only work if the website is sport specific. If you try to do too much, it will fall by the wayside.

The answer (as always) is server and bandwidth. Sufficient security can always be worked out, but it needs a broad-based core of volunteers.

OBTW: Are there any on the horizon??? Braves, ss-05 and I have sons who are graduating THIS year. rcbbfan and NC-dad's sons both graduated LAST year. Mudcat will be here forever (I bet), but this isn't a one person operation.

 

If you want to see a model of how this could work in years to come, go visit prepalert.com.

They are only doing the mountains and are having the normal "startup pains", but its a nice formula.

Being a multi-sport site would be a concern. That's a lot of pressure. They also don't have the user base that it takes to support that kind of operation up in the mountains yet. I takes awhile. We are barely getting there after 3 years.

 

i agree with all your guys the charlotte observer and surrounding areas are really basically pathetic at covering high school baseball. they should look at newspapers in florida and texas who have complete stats on every game and at least one or 2 articles everyday covering big games as well as rankings (on a side note, WHERE HAS THE SWEET 16 gone???). our local newspaper is to busy worrying about track, softball, and soccer. the spring time meens one thing, thats baseball!

 

Nobody beats the Salisbury Post when it comes to local high school sports. Ronnie Gallagher and Mike London absolutely rock. The Independent Tribune does an Ok job.

The Observer? weak. High school coverage is almost non-existant whereas if a Carolina Panthers player breaks wind, we get a 4-page exclusive.

 

You guys get the same things I get from the News and Observer and the Durham Herald. Little more than an box score for baseball in the N&O, and in the Durham Herald we may occasionally get a small article.

Now in Person County, we get good coverage from the Courier=Times out of Roxboro. Kelly Snow does a good job covering us, as did Tim Chandler for many years before him. IN fact, many coaches at out school complain that they do so well, that we give away scouting reports to opponents through good coverage.

Ya konw, they are interested in selling papers at at regional level and high school sports just dont make good sales regionally. Obviously, local papers are better at this.