Sports fans have noticed changes in The N&O’s coverage in the last few months — some for the better, some for the worse.
There is more coverage of some teams and events that News & Observer readers didn’t see before. There are new bylines. And, unfortunately, new deadlines that leave out stories and scores from late games.
Much of the change is the result of the merger of the sports staffs of The N&O and The Charlotte Observer. The two papers are owned by McClatchy Newspapers, and the sports merger is driven in large part by the need to cut expenses. Why send two reporters to cover the same ACC game, the newspapers reasoned, when one can file a game story for both papers?
Gary Schwab, editor of the combined staff, says the change also allows more and better coverage for readers of each paper. Where the two papers previously might have sent four staffers total to a big game — two game reporters and columnists for each paper — now there can be three and still provide more coverage.
Example: For the N.C. State-East Carolina game last weekend, The N&O ran a main story, a sidebar and a column analyzing the game. Former Charlotte reporter Ken Tysiac wrote the main story, while N&O staffers wrote the other two. For the UNC-Virginia Tech story, the analysis piece was by Charlotte-based columnist Scott Fowler.
The football report also included staff coverage of Wake Forest’s win over Florida State — in Tallahassee — and of James Madison University’s upset over Appalachian State in Harrisonburg, Va. It’s not certain that The N&O would have staffed those games last year.
Elsewhere in that Sunday paper, there were staff-written stories on the Ryder Cup from Louisville, the Carolina Panthers from Charlotte and three NASCAR stories from Dover, Del. Those seven stories all were written by reporters whose bylines previously said “The Charlotte Observer.”
Meanwhile, Charlotte Observer readers saw most of those stories, and can see coverage of the Carolina Hurricanes by N&Oer Chip Alexander.
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MONDAY’S SPORTS FRONT WAS AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE CHANGE, with stories on the Panthers, the NASCAR Sprint Cup and America’s dramatic win of the Ryder Cup — all written by former Observer guys.
Schwab is a former Observer editor who now oversees the combined staffs (and often commutes to Raleigh by Amtrak two days a week). He says the combination means for N&O readers more coverage of non-Triangle colleges Wake Forest, ECU and Appalachian, as well as more of NASCAR, the Panthers, the NBA Bobcats and golf.
Schwab, formerly director of investigative coverage at The Observer, also plans to do more sports enterprise stories.
“There will be stories that are just good reads, as well as watchdog stories that look deeper into the world of sports,” Schwab said. More changes are in the works, including enhanced online coverage and a redesign of the sports Page 2.
The staff merger is one major change. The other, less felicitous, is an acceleration of deadlines to 11:40 p.m. on weeknights and 10:40 on Saturdays. That’s also driven by expense reduction; instead of two presses using two press crews, the paper now is run on one press.
That has a couple of negative effects. One is that it’s almost impossible to run scores from West Coast games that end after the 11:40 deadline. The other is that reporters have about an hour less to report and write stories about local games, which hampers them in providing the reporting and depth that help make the newspaper story more valuable than TV coverage.
Deadlines are even earlier for The N&O’s first edition, which goes to counties outside the Triangle area. Readers there routinely have to wait an extra day for stories about late afternoon or evening games. The situation is not helped by a TV-driven move to more night games.
Assistant Sports Editor Steve Ruinsky says the paper is trying to stretch deadlines, especially for big games, by arranging with press managers to stop the press, add a late story and restart it. But that means not all readers will get the story. That happened Aug. 31, when a lightning storm delayed the Duke and Carolina football games and readers in Chapel Hill and Durham — where the two games were played — saw no story the next day. Lots of complaints.
I asked readers whether they’d noticed the changes. Yes, many said, the earlier deadlines hurt the paper. “Late scores and stories seem to have become rarer, making me migrate more to espn.com for my sports coverage. Of course, that’s not a substitute for local sports news, but it does affect my reliance on The N&O for national sports news,” said John Lynch of Durham.
A few complained about too many Charlotte stories, but more said they appreciated the broader coverage. “I also think the sports section is improved by the combination of staffs, which has had the effect of providing more/better coverage of the Panthers, NASCAR, etc; and perhaps will provide a little more coverage of the Bobcats during the NBA season,” said Dick Walt of Durham.
There were complaints about high school coverage — that the paper is not getting as many late games in. And two readers complained that the extra attention to big-college programs has not spread to the historically black colleges in the Triangle. Donal Ware of Fuquay-Varina, who works at St. Augustine’s College, asked, “Will we see some articles from Johnson C. Smith, which is in Charlotte? But more importantly, how does this combination help St. Augustine’s, Shaw and NCCU’s coverage in The N&O, schools right here in the Triangle?”
Schwab said he did not foresee much additional coverage of smaller colleges, nor of the so-called “Olympic sports” like soccer, lacrosse and field hockey at area universities. The manpower gains from merger spread only so far, it seems. I hope the paper can do better.
Schwab said also that he’s sensitive to maintaining separate identities for the two papers, even while serving them with one staff.
“We’re not trying to merge the two papers into one paper,” he said. “We understand that Charlotte and Raleigh have different interests, as well as interests that overlap. We want the Raleigh section to reflect what readers in this area care about.”
