Newspaper coverage

Langston, thank you for taking the time to respond to some of the comments on this board. And you make valid points too. Although I routinely praise The Salisbury Post for their local high school sports coverage,,,, I admit that its very unfair to criticize you guys at the Charlotte Observer when you have 100+ schools to cover and the Salisbury Post maybe only covers 10-20 (and thats counting middle schools too).

I admit that it would take tons of manpower for the Charlotte Observer to give each and every school in your area its due coverage, this is simply much more difficult to do for a "big-city" newspaper. With that said however, you "big-city" newspaper guys could routinely read a smaller paper like the Salisbury Post and maybe take some pointers. The Salisbury Post not only covers local sports in-depth, but they run player profiles for all sports, usually 5-6 players across the top of one page about every few days.

I think what bothers a lot of readers around Mecklenburg County is that they only see an occasional story in your paper, but nothing consistently. Boxscores are better than nothing, but still don't say much about these young individuals who are growing up in your community. Why not take just one day per week (say Wednesday) and devote several pages each Wednesday solely to local sports? Just a suggestion.

I realize its a huge job and its difficult to please everyone. It just seems you could pick up some pointers from these smaller papers. Because also remember, while you may say that these smaller papers have fewer schools and more time to devote on local sports, there's also an argument that they have smaller newspaper staffs too. Bottomline is that smaller newspapers seem to cover local sports better. This is an area where Mecklenburg folks would like to see the Observer improve, if possible.

Again, thank you for your time.

 

You make good points, too. But consider this, tomorrow in Charlotte we have 14 softball games, 16 baseball games, two track meets and 14 girls soccer matches. If we were in Salisbury, those numbers would be much less.

Also tomorrow we've got the Wachovia Championship in town, the NBA playoffs going on, MLB, etc. We have to give coverage for all of those things. Should we leave out MLB or NBA news to include coverage of another prep game? Should we pull staff away from Wachovia to do a baseball game in Huntersville?

These are questions we have to consider all the time. I don't think given our size, we are going to have just basic profiles of pick-your-starter on our page. Those, for us, wouldn't say much or mean much to our readers. To that parent and the kid's family it would probably be gold. But we have 800,000 readers every day. We can't do that.

We have added a prep page each Friday from August to March. We dont' have an advertiser beyond basketball season. If someone wants to buy an ad through spring to support the page, we're more than happy to keep it going. As it is, our editors have still left us some space on fridays to do more local preps and we've done that through spring.

Also to your smaller staff thing, yes that's true, but the things they cover are different. While for us the big story on a Tuesday might be Panthers or Bobcats, their lead story would be the high school game because that's the biggest thing going on in their community.

That's what helps hs football in Charlotte. On Friday nights in the fall, football is often our lead story, so we get to do it big.

 

Langston, thanks for your reply. And btw, I enjoy reading the Observer about the Bobcats, Panthers, etc. But I don't live in Charlotte, I live in a much smaller community. In my community, I enjoy and the athletes "especially" enjoy reading more in-depth stories about the local sports.

All I'm saying is that if you YOURSELF admit that the Observer should try to do more for local coverage,,, then you can take some pointers from these smaller local papers (Salisbury, Shelby, etc.).

I realize its a much tougher job for you big-city guys...

 

Wow...I didn't realize that an advertiser can make that happen!?! I guess we need to do our spring donation drive next year to ensure space for you Langston?...Seriously, if we can bring on an advertising donor for next spring, then we can get more Prep coverage?

 

Pretty much, yeah.