Inside the Beacon
We just completed another high school year. We experimented with some new ideas:
1. Ready, Set, Play: a weekly section on high school sports.
2. We started our high school blog: Varsity Letters.
3. Due to space concerns, we limited the amount of space given to us naming all-star teams.
Now we are looking at a couple more things for the fall:
1. More nightly roundups, but less individual game coverage.
2. Even more use of Ohio.com, through blogs, video and audio.
3. Only putting scores in the newspaper, with the boxscores being online.
4. Eliminating high school all-stars altogether. Maybe just naming players of the year.
What suggestions would you have, and what of the previous ideas seems like good ideas?
By the way, Ready, Set, Play will be back next season.
July 5th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Why not just eliminate the sports page altogether? Let some kid at Revere put it all in his blog.
July 5th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Better yet, why not simply create a Beacon Journal page on MySpace? Think of the possibilities. "Stephanie Storm has 864 friends."
July 5th, 2007 at 11:57 am
That sort of thing might not look too good for poor old Sheldon. I'm not sure he can pull in that many friends.
July 5th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Point well-taken, I really never considered that.
July 6th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
I thought the Beacon's henchers did a tremendous job.
July 7th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
How about THIS: Less NASCAR/racing and golf stories hogging up prime space in the sports section. Geez, we're now utterly inundated with that racing stuff, and it appeals to what, 2% of your readers? NASCAR people do not READ; reason it out. You're trying to reach the wrong audience in print.
NEO is a high school sports mecca. Cutting back on it in print IN ANY WAY is only gonna hurt your readership/subscriptions. When guys go to the toilet to read, they don't take a computer with them so they can look up ohio.com. C'mon, you're a newspaper…give us something to keep readers coming back. Racing, golf and outdoorsy junk is not it.
July 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Actually, that is an interesting comment, jeda. I wonder if that's a stereotype, or if it is indeed true. What percentage of NASCAR fans read newspapers, either the old-fashioned way or online?
With respect to golf, I think you're wrong. I think there's a sizable gold audience out there reading about it.
With respect to your second paragraph, I'm afraid you're wrong again. Newspapers are eventually going to go the way of the horse and buggy. But you're absolutely right, who wants to haul electronics whenever you have to take a dump? Although, I get the sense that future generations and knockoffs of the I-Phone, or whatever that thing is called, will one day be the Beacon Journal's and every other current newspaper's best friend.
July 7th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I meant golf. Not gold. Obviously.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I thought the Beacon did a great job on High School sports this season. I would like to see more coverage on local teams such as
Green, Manchester, Akron, Coventry and Springfield.