EDITOR’S NOTE By Hank Kalet: Parents encouraged to help with sports coverage.
By: Hank Kalet
An important part of any community news organization is its sports coverage.
I still fondly remember my one and only mention in the sports pages of my community weekly newspaper, a one-line mention about a game in which I banged out a double and triple, probably the only game in my life in which I managed more than a single.
My sense from talking to parents and kids in Cranbury, Jamesburg and Monroe is that my experience is not unique. Youth athletes love to see their name in the paper, get a real kick out of it and derive a lot of pride when their accomplishments are noted.
That’s one of the reasons we at The Cranbury Press pride ourselves on our efforts to cover as much of the local scene as we physically can. There is nothing like hearing from a parent after their kid’s photo has been in the paper and it doesn’t hurt circulation either.
But that doesn’t always mean we’ll be as successful as we’d like in getting to everything. Every so often, we hear from parents who tell us we’ve neglected some sport or another, that we’ve ignored the freshmen and junior varsity teams, that a particular youth league team is not getting the coverage it deserves, that we failed to highlight an athlete at Princeton High School.
The complaints are valid for the most part, though there are mitigating circumstances. We don’t get to every game played by the long list of teams at the high school. Our youth league wraps do not always include every game that’s been played. We can’t get photos of every sporting event that occurs.
That doesn’t mean we aren’t trying. When I started writing this Editor’s Note column last month, I explained that I wanted to give our readers an inside look at the paper, at the challenges we face and the decisions we make.
Well, one of our greatest challenges is to find a way to cover several dozen varsity sports teams at two high schools, nearly twice the number of freshmen and junior varsity teams and a sizeable number of youth league teams with just one full-time sports editor, a handful of freelance writers and one full-time photographer. That’s not an easy task especially when you consider that we don’t just cover Cranbury, Jamesburg and Monroe from this office, but South Brunswick, as well.
That’s really not a lot of staff, when you consider the sheer number of games being played.
We also have a limited amount of space in which to run sports news or any news, for that matter. Our sports pages generally run from two to three pages, or a total of about 200-250 news inches probably more than we should be running given the volume of advertising we have. The section is zoned, meaning there are two separate sections with one focusing on Cranbury and Princeton High School and the other focusing on Monroe and Jamesburg. Three pages and 250 inches may seem like a lot of space, but it isn’t. Stories tend to run between 15 and 20 news inches sometimes longer and the average photo probably takes up about 12-15 news inches. When you do the math, you can see how quickly 250 inches gets filled.
This affects the frequency with which we can run stories on some sports perhaps, we skip a week of Princeton swimming or Monroe field hockey so we include coverage of a basketball game, or news that a local grad is excelling as a college wrestler. But we do try to get to everything as often as we can.
As for the JV and freshman teams, and the teams at the Cranbury, Grace M. Breckwedel and Applegarth schools, we need help. If a team is excelling, we will run its results if they are submitted. But we need a coach or parent to send in the information. If sent, we guarantee it will run. Perhaps not word-for-word, but the important information will get in.
The key thing to remember, however, is that we can only do our job with your help. Our Sports Editor Rich Fisher, who I feel is one of the best in the community news business, assures me that the youth programs, for the most part, do an excellent job of submitting their results. This helps both sides, as it gets your childrens’ names in the paper and it helps us turn out a better, more well-rounded product.
If you are involved in a youth league whose results do not appear, feel free to submit them. It could be travel, or in-town. Also, if you have a child excelling in youth sports in another town, submit their exploits as well.
Speaking of other towns, we sometimes lose track of local athletes when they go to prep or parochial schools, or to college, for that matter. If you know of a local athlete who is excelling elsewhere in high school or college, please bring it to our attention.
So help us out. If you have sports news, drop him a note. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected], by mail at P.O. Box 309, Dayton, N.J. 08810, by fax at (732) 329-8291 or by phone at (732) 329-9214.
The Editor’s Note column will run as often as necessary as a way to explain the workings of The Cranbury Press to our readers. So, please, send me your questions about the paper, about the news business, about the decisions we’ve made and any suggestions you have. I’ll try and answer as many as I can in future Editor’s Notes. Call me at (732) 329-9214, write me at P.O. Box 309, Dayton, N.J. 08810 or e-mail me by clicking here.