We got to talking about the way we’re handling — the way we’ve reduced — track results, going with only the winners on weekday dual and three-way meets. It’s not a move that thrills track followers, and we’ve heard from a few. The reason we did that is because we’re making cuts in a number of areas because of our own staff and space reductions.
We’re down to four pages nearly every day but Sunday. And we’ve lost personnel. Track (and swimming) traditionally takes up the most space and the most time to compile. It also has the most comprehensive Web site of any prep sport going (www.athletic.net), with meet results, rankings, etc. That’s where we get most of our results now, at least when coaches post them immediately after meets. So the information is at least available.
We’ve reduced what we write on all of our prep roundups, we aren’t chasing results for out-of-area, out-of-league games that in the past we’ve gone after (Klamath, Roseburg, Eugene), sometimes we have/will combine golf and tennis results in a roundup with limited or no write-ups (they’re often self-explanatory). Theoretically, trimming in these areas will streamline the office phone work on prep nights so we can get someone out to cover an important game or two or have time to work on a feature.
It’s not just preps that have taken a hit. NBA and major league roundups are smaller, given that we devote a lot of space to their box scores already. This time of year, when they overlap and we have all of our spring sports going, the space crunch is accentuated. You’ll see days where we pick what we think is the best MLB game of the night and have more on it. Maybe it’ll be a regional roundup, with the A’s, Giants and Mariners, or a roundup in another abbreviated form.
There are things happening in the sporting world apart from these that people would like to see as well, and we’ve got to find room to accommodate as much as possible, within reason. It’s a work in progress. We had more than we needed on a pro tennis tournament today, I thought. I assume that was the result of waiting for the last Scoreboard items to come in just before deadline and being uncertain how much space would be needed. Tennis got the hole that was left.
Back to the track agate. One staff member floated the idea of running first and second places in the results. It would provide context to the winners’ marks. It would also double what we’re doing now, which means something we had in today’s paper and might have in Friday’s paper — Thursday is typically the big track day — would have to be eliminated. We have tens of thousands of readers, and the reality is a good majority are interested in things other deeper prep agate.
We wish we had the staff to cover all that we’ve done in the past and the space to harbor it. But these aren’t those times.
