I had five or six people ask me Saturday what the trouble was with our newspaper. We had just two football games in Saturday's paper, leaving some our readers frustrated, others irritated and others downright mad.
Here's what is going on. We are on a new system and our paper has gone through a bit of a re-organization.
Our deadline is now about 10 p.m. Friday night. As some of you know, we rely very, very heavily on coaches or their stats to call results in since we only cover two games per Friday night -- but that wasn't the problem this time. The only two games we had in the paper Saturday were the ones we were able to cover -- I was at the Montgomery at Watchung Hills game, and my colleague Jerry Carino was at the Somerville-Immaculata contest.
We are now working with our sister paper the Home News Tribune to produce the daily sports report. As a result, we are working on new computer systems and new ways to get the latest news in the paper.
After a bumpy start last weekend, we believe that we have addressed the issue that cost us problems last weekend and that going forward you'll have the same timely reports you expect from us.
It's been a challenge for all of us -- we're all learning a new way to do things. But I'm sorry our readers felt shortchanged. We're fixing it.
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5 comments:
Noble and valent attempt to justify poor corporate decisions. Sounds like a sinking ship Harry. Time to move on. Dont' waste your talent on an organization only interested in the bottom line, cutbacks and big CEO salaries.
Harry,
You are doing a great job of covering up for your employer. That's what you should do so that you can continue to receive a paycheck.
However, there is no excuse for the horrible coverage that the C-N provided on Friday's opening night HS football games. Why is 10:00 the magic time for submission? It's not like this paper has the distribution network of the Star Ledger, when even they had some scores in on Saturday morning, and they are based in Newark!?!?! Why should the loyal C-N readers be penalized by this 10:00 corporate dictate? How is your company going to correct this situation? It's not like they are using carrier pigeons to deliver the articles (or maybe that is how a Gannett organization relays their trasfer of informtion).
The C-N did not even cover the Yankee game in Saturday's edition. Being a Met fan, I could really care less about the Crankees, but there is a tremendous fan base in Central NJ, you being one of them, that should be able to read about the game. The Star-Ledger had the game covered, so it appears that this is truly a C-N issue.
With today's technology, hiding behind a 10:00 edict is the easy way out. In the coprorate world, that would be unacceptable. We would need to find and provide a solution to correcting the problem. Guess in the journalism world you can get away with and hide behind this lame reason.
Harry, keep up your good work with reporting. We appreciate your candor and dedication to HS sports. Hopefully, in the future your company can find a way to deliver this information to their readers in a more timely fashion.
Harry and I take great pride in our Saturday product, and we were not proud of what happened Friday night. Some of the problems were technical, involving the switch-over to a new system, and will be fixed. But the 10 p.m. deadline is a harder hurdle to clear. Our printing press has been closed and our paper is now printed in Freehold by the Asbury Park Press plant. That's why the deadline is so early.
Jerry & Harry,
Thanks for the comments. I did not know that the press was shut down in Bridgewater. That's a shame. Printing the paper in Freehold just adds to the complexity of getting your product out to the consumer in Somerset/Hunterdon and Middlesex County.
Usually when a cost saving option is implemented, the service or product is expected to be as good as the prior product. It should be seemless to the consumer. That is not the case here.
Are the Home News HS sports readers also experiencing the same problems as the C-N HS sports readers? If the answer is yes, then your coporate leaders are really trashing HS sports in Central New Jersey. The Home News HS sports section was the "gold standard" in coverage, and I find it hard to believe that their readers would tolerate such an inferior product after having such a great product for years.
Jerry, your Varsity HS Section is a nice new method of trying to get to the Home News level of coverage/service. It's a shame that football, wrestling, basketball, ice hockey, etc. night games will not receive the proper coverage unless someone can correct the current cut-off problem.
Is there an option of providing this coverage electronically, so that a reader can log into the C-N website and obtain scores and game updates? Readers will still buy the newspaper and late game results can then be uploaded with stories attached. Something like what the Star-Ledger does with HS Baseball box scores, although not very accurate, but still still better than nothing.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and good luck to uncovering a solution.
One thing I enjoy is the Sports page(kudos to the writers) but this earlier deadline is killing me. Started with not getting the Patriot scores and now it's moving to the High School pages. It was the only thing keeping me as a Subscriber(the Sports) but now that the new arrangement is killing this, it's probably time to finally drop my subscription after 25 years of being a Subscriber. Will miss the Sports writers but this arrangement is NOT working.
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