Editors talk about challenges, solutions for shrinking newshole

By BRIAN HOWELL
Sports Editor
Longmont (Colo.) Times-Call

Story posted on Jan. 29, 2009

Editor's note: This is the last of a four-part series on how sports editors are dealing with the ever-shrinking newshole.

This is a challenging time for newspapers for a variety of reasons, whether it's staffing cuts, budget cuts or lack of resources in other areas of the newsroom.

One of the big challenges facing newspapers throughout the country is how to deal with increasingly smaller news holes. Recently, I did a survey among sports editors to find out just how many sports sections are losing space and how they're dealing with it.

Of the 66 editors who responded, 53 reported that they have seen a reduction in space over the past year or two. Some of them reported drastic reductions and others simply a smaller web width or a 5-10 percent reduction. Either way, it's clear the majority of our sports sections are getting smaller. Several of the 13 editors who reported no reduction is space said they expect to lose space at some point in 2009.

With smaller sections, the challenge in front of all of us is how to fill our sections and continue to provide our readers with quality. Judging from this survey, the widespread opinion is that local is the way to go, with the Internet and outlets such as ESPN handling the national sports news.

Each day for the next four days we will have comments from editors throughout the country in response to a survey.

PART 4: What are some creative ways you have come up with to continue producing a quality product despite a decrease in news space?

"We've become more commentary and analysis oriented. For instance, we use a columnist at a big boxing match or tennis tournament or golf tournament and don't feel we need a game story any more. We even do that for some of our local pro hockey coverage."

— Randy Harvey, Los Angeles Times

"One of our most creative things was the 2008 Smashmouth Awards, a collection of all our best video highlights from football season re-purposed into a voting module with 10 categories. Since we don't cover regular-season games except football, our reporters focus on print and video features during the regular season, then go (with) heavy coverage of playoffs."

— Matt Pepin, Times Herald-Record/Varsity845.com (Middletown, N.Y.)

"We haven't cut coverage. What we've done is redesign how we do it so we can do it more efficiently. We've actually beefed up coverage in some areas."

— Monte Lorell, USA Today

"We have developed several local projects, such as a 'playmaker' feature at the end of each high school sports season with a collection of great photos representing each sport. The staff chooses one 'good citizen' athlete per sport and we publish a collection."

— Judy Hildner, Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain

"We're blogging more. Live chatting. Trying to create a community on rgj.com/sports. I can't say our creative juices are devoted as much to print these days as they are on the web. We'll run shorter gamers and put full stories on the web."

— Lauren Gustus, Reno Gazette-Journal

"We now use wires with more frequency to cover game stories, freeing our reporters up to work on news, enterprise and features that they would not otherwise have time to do. (They are) the kinds of articles that are distinctive and which we believe our audience expects."

— Tom Jolly, New York Times

"More than ever before, we're turning – and turning readers to – the Web as an indispensable place to get expanded coverage. For instance, John McClain's weekly NFL notebook, which we've run for years, has always been a huge hit with area football fans. It was also a big-time space-eater every Sunday. Now, we promote it heavily in print and run it online only, along with John's equally popular blog and other offerings (power rankings, etc.). The move has measurably increased Web traffic to our online NFL pages."

— Jeff Rosen, Houston Chronicle

"We've decided priorities one, two and three are local sports. We've redoubled our efforts – despite recent staffing cutbacks – to cover the same amount of preps we had been and take as many prep calls as we can. As for the local university, we're trying to get a few more features to supplement the game coverage."

— Scott Rosenberg, Greeley (Colo.) Tribune

"Our biggest space challenge will be the 2009 loss of special sections. I think our strategy will be to try to make big events feel big without the sections. Instead of doing a 6- or 8-page special section, we might do a half-wrapper on the front of the sports section, where pages 1 and 2 are the big event and page 3 is the traditional sports cover."

— Bryce Miller, Des Moines Register

"We're using more graphic elements in an effort to reduce story length. Not sure how creative that is, but I think the readers enjoy it."

— Greg Dewalt, Times Daily (Florence, Ala.)

"We have a philosophy in our sports department that encourages writing outside the box. Everybody has read the same old game stories, so we try to provide a new flavor. We try to make our stories unique."

— Chris Stephens, Daily Tribune News (Cartersville, Ga.)

"We've changed our roundup format to be more concise and went sans headlines on them. Plus, we went to a college football Top 25 roundup style that is contained in one column on Sundays."

— Jim O'Connell, Colorado Springs Gazette

"More note-form writing, heavier blog writing, limit longer features. Anything over 22 inches has to be cleared through me and given a day's notice if it's not breaking news."

— Joe Frollo, Canton (Ohio) Repository

"When space is really tight, we opt to run stand-alone photos of pro games with long cutlines and a refer to our website, where more extensive game coverage and/or stats can be found."

— Angela Daidone, Jersey Journal

"We've started running Q&As. We use far more info boxes to include, or break out, interesting information rather than make it a separate story."

— Jason Recker, Jasper (Ind.) Herald

"We've tried to provide the readers with what they want – local coverage. We're a 33,000-circulation paper. Our readers buy our paper for local coverage. We've also drastically increased our Web presence and have constantly tried to inform our readers about additional coverage on the Web, especially photos, blogs and videos."

— Steve Heiser, York Dispatch

"One thing we have done is list weekly college and high school award winners rather than write short pieces about their accomplishments."

— Alan Brignall, Finger Lakes (N.Y.) Times

"Newspaper folks ... need to listen to their consumers. When readers want more of something, they'll let you know. Aim to provide more of what readers want while trimming the superfluous content."

— Sandy Smith, Concord (N.H.) Monitor

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