Lack of Print Coverage

footballguy51 · Post by **footballguy51** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 9:59 am

For those of you that didn't know this, the blade is available online, so you can read about the BG game on there if you wish.

bgnewser · Post by **bgnewser** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:47 am

hammb wrote:
Class of 61 wrote:
bgnewser wrote:Honestly, Joel can probably agree with me here...

I don't want The PD to cover that game heavily because the whole point of The BG News and The Blade and The Sentinel going to practice every week and doing features is because we're trying to get you to come to us when you want to read about the Falcons.

It's our coverage area, we don't want the PD to be the place you go for BG coverage and the smaller papers in Ypsilanti can probably agree about the Detroit papers covering it.
Newser:
It's great that you guys cover the game, and the Blade gives it even broader coverage...but I subscribe to the PD as I live in the Cleveland area. And I'm damn tired of reading nonsensical articles about the ....eyes backups. The previous MAC games that were played during the week all received fair coverage..admittedly, Akron was one of the teams playing, but the two Mich. teams even got a fair write-up...so why not US? Only excuse I'd bet they'd give would be that we played a Fri.Nite game, which "conflicted" with the HS playoffs...while true to a point, the little dinky article they put in was ridiculous. And if our friend from Lakewood doesn't care, I DO!
I get what you're saying, but I would not expect much coverage of BG-EMU in the Cleveland paper man.

I'm with you that I'd rather read about the BG game than the Buckeye backups, but I assure you that you're in a HUGE overwhelming minority in that regard in the Cleveland area. The Plain Dealer is trying to sell more papers. They have long ago realized that they sell way more papers catering to the Buckeyes fans than they would catering to MAC fans. While it is possible you could drop your subscription citing lack of coverage for the MAC, they would lose far more subscriptions if they cut down their coverage of the Buckeyes.

I have long ago realized that it makes no sense to complain about what the media covers. They are not in the business of giving information that you, individually, want. They're in the business of selling papers, and to maximize those sales they try to appeal to the broadest audience possible. Generally, they have a far better gauge on what has broad appeal than us fans do.

Also a great point, if I've learned anything at this fine institution, it's that newspapers need to localize.

Unfortunately everyone and their brother likes OSU in the Cleveland area. So they're going to cover the hell out of them. While OSU has a beat reporter at the PD, the MAC has one writer, Elton. And he covers the Cleveland area MAC teams much more because they matter more to the area.

And with high school playoffs going on, the amount of people that would pick up a PD to read about BG has got to be a very small minority.

Flipper · Post by **Flipper** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:03 am

The Blade is doing a less than stellar job of covering BG sports these days. Case in point...they didn't even cover this week's football press conference.

hammb · Post by **hammb** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:09 am

Flipper wrote:The Blade is doing a less than stellar job of covering BG sports these days. Case in point...they didn't even cover this week's football press conference.

I would agree. I miss Maureen.

Dayons_Den · Post by **Dayons_Den** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:12 am

hammb wrote:
Flipper wrote:The Blade is doing a less than stellar job of covering BG sports these days. Case in point...they didn't even cover this week's football press conference.
I would agree. I miss Maureen.

And John Wagner.

Jham · Post by **Jham** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:27 pm

Class of '61:
First, let's stop the generalizations and try to rationalize. Did I say I didn't want to read about the BG team? No. I go where I expect the BG coverage to be: The Blade, the S-T, the BG News.

Hammb said it perfectly, though he did manage to get in the old "newspapers are just trying to sell copies" dig. Whether BG fans, myself included, like it or not, OSU is what people here want to read about. Not BG. I hate Ohio State with a passion. Hate it. But that doesn't mean I expect the PD to ignore them just because I dislike the school.

I shouldn't expect a paper that covers three professional sports teams (a fourth in the Monsters) 100 high schools, Kent, Akron, etc. etc. etc. to cover my alma mater just because I live there in town and 20 others might also. (That may be a low estimate.)

I have a co-worker who lives in Shaker Heights. She went to Missouri. Should the PD staff Missouri games because there's someone living in its coverage area who went there? I have another co-worker who went to Penn State who lives in Cleveland city limits. Should she insist on the PD covering the Nittany Lions?

Your argument is tired and way off base.

hammb · Post by **hammb** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:45 pm

Jham wrote: Hammb said it perfectly, though he did manage to get in the old "newspapers are just trying to sell copies" dig.

Certainly don't mean it as a dig. It's the truth, ain't it?

The Newspapers' goal is to make money. They do that through sales & advertising revenue. Ad revenue is directly related to sales figures.

As such their main goal is selling newspapers. They do that by printing articles that they feel are going to most appeal to their market. In the case of the PD that is going to be OSU far more than it is BG.

Certainly didn't mean to put a dig on all newspapers.

JoeFalcon · Post by **JoeFalcon** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:49 pm

With BG's alumni base in Greater Cleveland and the putrid history that Akron and Kent have in the sport of football, it wouldn't surprise me if there's more interest in BG than either of those two. However, they are a Cleveland paper so I have no problem with the focus being on them. Heck, they have to share a beat writer as it is.

We get flack from deranged Toledo fans who think the Blade shouldn't be covering BG. Their heads might explode if the Plain Dealer started a BG beat.

Jham · Post by **Jham** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 4:59 pm

hammb wrote:
Jham wrote: Hammb said it perfectly, though he did manage to get in the old "newspapers are just trying to sell copies" dig.
Certainly don't mean it as a dig. It's the truth, ain't it?

The Newspapers' goal is to make money. They do that through sales & advertising revenue. Ad revenue is directly related to sales figures.

As such their main goal is selling newspapers. They do that by printing articles that they feel are going to most appeal to their market. In the case of the PD that is going to be OSU far more than it is BG.

Certainly didn't mean to put a dig on all newspapers.

Spot on, hammb. Misread your tone (easy to do on here). Increasingly, you hear folks throw that out there for the paper's reasoning, as it's a bad thing.

It fits pretty darn well in this case: If your readers quite obviously want oodles of OSU coverage, and couldn't care any less about BG, what would you do?

Why waste resources on something 99.9 percent of your readership (that's being generous; that'd be 334 of 334,000 subscribers) care about?