Thursday 21 July 2011

Sports hole

With all the clout the Toronto Sun sports department has at 333, it is a shame it can't  get Quebecor to extend the off-site print deadlines to accommodate night events.

Tuesday night's extra-innings Toronto/Seattle nail-biter was yet another disappointment for print readers plunking down cash expecting full coverage by the tabloid's crack team of baseball writers.

The game, won by the Jays in the 14th, was done by midnight

It is shameful, inconsiderate management of a morning newspaper.

That also goes for stale, two-day-old concert reviews.

But then Sun print readers have been second-class citizens for more than a decade, despite their dominance in readership surveys.

They carry the ball and get the shaft. 

7 comments:

  1. Some papers have a sports deadline of 9 p.m. The best is when we're still running Super Bowl preview stories the day after the Super Bowl.

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  2. I've heard there are some with 7 p.m. deadlines

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  3. Here's a question: What was the drop-dead deadline to file a late-late-late sports (or other) story in the old days? Are you implying that there would have been a deadline for a later edition in Toronto that would have allowed for that late story?

    And I'm not asking to be a snarky. I'm asking because I don't know.

    I live in rural Alberta and I can tell you that we seldom ever get an edition of the Ed-Sun or Ed-Journal that would have late-game stuff in it. That's for obvious reasons - it's an earlier edition that has to get on the truck north. But, yeah, that means two-day-old concert reviews and no gamer from the 14-inning ball games or results from the four-overtime NHL playoff games.

    But how late was too late in the old days?

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  4. The disgraceful, shameful print deadlines aren't just confined to dailies.
    Imagine working for a weekly within the Sun Media chain. There are several Wednesday papers that see editorial pagination done the previous FRIDAY.
    Yes, boys and girls, I said FRIDAY.
    Weekend stuff and Monday night council meeting stories do not get in the following Wednesday edition. It has to wait another week regardless of its importance.
    Reporters at these papers have to take the heat from people on the street as to why stories and photos didn't make into the paper that week while those making the boneheaded decisions are, in all likelihood, several hours away and not hearing the same level of flak that the front-line editorial people are taking.
    Deadlines are screwed up all over the place within this "media company."

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  5. You're right about the screwed up deadlines. In Grande Prairie earlier this month, they unveiled a new (fairly sharp-looking) tabloid format for the Daily Herald-Tribune.

    Accompanying the new format was a new time hitting the street. The DHT was an afternoon paper with a late-morning deadline but now it's a "morning" paper with an early-evening deadline the night before (I think the deadline to file is around 6 p.m.)

    It was all done in the name of getting a paper into the hands of readers with "their morning coffee."

    One problem with that: The paper hits the street around 8 a.m. - a time when most morning-paper readers are on their way to work.

    In fact, I think the Edmonton Sun still hits the street in GP each day sooner than the DHT hits the street - which is remarkable given that the press for the Sun is 450 km away from the DHT building and the press for the DHT is IN the DHT building.

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  6. Remember when the Toronto Sun was the only daily in North America to miss the 2009 World Series final game results? It also missed coverage of several of this year's NBA playoff games where the paper ran only an early photo and a brief caption. Oh well...


    Quote: "But how late was too late in the old days?"

    (I stand to be corrected here but) at the Toronto Sun, early deadline (which included papers that went to out-of-town locations) was around 10:30 PM or so. Although, you could still make it as late as 11 PM or so, if editors knew late content was coming in (e.g. concerts, sports. spot news).

    The late deadline (for the in-town paper) was about 1:00 AM to 1:30 AM. Although, by re-plating on the fly, you could still get content into the paper past 2 AM, especially if the editors were holding a spot for late news (e.g. sports, concerts, etc).

    The point to having digital cameras, reporters with laptops, desktop publishing, direct-to-plate, etc, etc, was not just to save money but rather to allow for later and later deadlines. This would then allow for more (late) content to be published.

    But as papers became more digital, some papers' deadlines got earlier and earlier, (instead of later and later), for no reason whatsoever other than to save a few bucks.

    The loser is, of course, the public. But who cares? The public can always go to the web site, right?

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  7. from facebook
    Timmins Daily Press
    OUR APOLOGIES

    Due to technical difficulties at our printing plant, there will be late delivery of Tuesday's print edition of The Daily Press. We anticipate our print edition hitting the streets by noon or shortly thereafter.

    We apologize for any inconvenience.

    I think this paper is printed in Sudbury or North Bay or something now, since they shut down its actual namesake press

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