APSE

 

What do readers want?

“That’s like discussing the meaning of life for newspapers,” The Baltimore Sun’s head of sports Ron Fritz said. “We wish we knew perfectly, and all of our problems would be solved.”

Paul Vigna, The Harrisburg Patriot-News’ sports editor and region chair, served as chair of the first panel.

“We’ve found ourselves in a position where we’re trying to please everyone,” Vigna said of the newspaper business. “But with the ever-shrinking space in the newspaper, we’re needing to find a balance between what the reader wants, what is most important and what we can fit in the limited space.”

Fritz shared his Baltimore Sun experiences, as well as preferences found amongst its readership.

The Sun, like many newspapers, uses Omniture, a web analytics program that tracks which stories readers are viewing on the newspaper’s website. The Sun found an extraordinary demand for Baltimore Ravens coverage, and subsequently made an effort to appropriately meet the demand.

“While we’re limited with space in the print edition, there’s no limit to the amount of unique content we can create and put on the website,” Fritz said. “We found that our audience really wants unique content and photos, and that they’re willing to pay for it. We provide plenty of Ravens content and our audience still wants it despite digital subscriptions.”

The voice of the everyday reader was present at the workshop, as Joe Powers sat on the panel to offer his advice. Powers recently retired from Pennsylvania state government and serves on The Patriot-News’ reader panel. That meets twice a year at the Patriot-News offices. Readers usually get free pizza and water and a chance to talk sports and offer feedback on the section. Some of their ideas, Vigna said, have been incorporated into the section. 

“I want to see analysis and good writing,” Powers said. “I don’t always have a lot of time to read the paper, so I generally have a routine of which writers I make an effort to read because I know they’re good writers.”

 

Powers and the overwhelming majority of those attending the workshop spoke to the importance of local sports coverage for a newspaper.

“I like to see a game story, no matter the length,” Powers said. “It provides more than just what’s in the boxscore. It will differ between every reader, but I really like to see the local sports coverage.”

Fritz and other editors at the workshop spoke of an increasing practice in which their respective newspapers use an Associated Press game story so their own writers can spend time writing columns, notebooks and other forms of analysis.

“We’ve found that our audience doesn’t care about the byline,” Fritz said. “They just want the information. So we’ll use an AP game story for the facts and let our staff analyze the game.”

The general consensus of those attending the workshop felt that sports agate, outside of the major professional sports, was the least important part of the paper and is generally the first area to be cut when space is tight.

Also, the overwhelming majority agreed that it was more important to provide in-depth coverage on less topics, as opposed to printing as many stories as possible while cutting the story length to do so.

– Anthony Burkhart, The Pottsville (Pa.) Republican-Herald