News coverage for high school football

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

I was reading the paper this morning at breakfast looking for coverage of the games for some of the teams I am interested in last night.

There was NONE

Not the Tribune
Not the Sun Times
Not the Southtown
Not the Joliet Herald
Not the Daily Herald
Not EDGYTIM
Not High School Lites
Not even the friggen Patch

I know that the papers were reducing their staff but this is ridiculous! You can't even get a score anymore unless you're a CCL team or the West suburbs. Those scores were everywhere.

 

[Penlight]

To how many of these publications do you subscribe?

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

To how many of these publications do you subscribe?

All except the Daily Herald. I also subscribe to a few national papers but they don't cover highschool sports either.

 

[Penlight]

We need more of you

 

[MWittman]

Not even the friggen Patch

LWeastDad:

I know your heart is with LWE, but which other teams were you looking for coverage? Naturally, I agree the coverage is dreadful. In fact, I bought a copy of the Tribune the other day, to find it was still obsessing with the Chicago Bears. While I understand coverage of professional franchises is necessary, this was a one in its parcel of a countdown of the greatest 100 Bears, but occurred just as high school football is dawning.

As far as your national subscriptions, I see you as a WSJ man. Perhaps the FT?

 

[chitown-irish]

Your best bet for high school coverage is twitter. The days of taylor bell and bob sakomato are gone sadly

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

LWeastDad:

I know your heart is with LWE, but which other teams were you looking for coverage?

As far as your national subscriptions, I see you as a WSJ man. Perhaps the FT?

Looking for LWE, LWC, LWW, Lockport, HF, Andrew, BB. Mostly the high schools in the SWSC and my local area.(I did see the Brook) You would figure that the #3 team in the area playing a north suburban team that has been historically good would garner some coverage. Even a rookie reporter... but nope

National papers are NYT, WaPo,WSJ, Financial Times, Naples Daily news (not national)

The bottom line here is the coverage is not even horrible, its non-existant.

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

Your best bet for high school coverage is twitter. The days of taylor bell and bob sakomato are gone sadly

I have Twitter. Find me any info on LWE or Lockport on twitter, except for the final scores from Disabato.... Nada...

 

[3OrangeWhips]

I have Twitter. Find me any info on LWE or Lockport on twitter, except for the final scores from Disabato.... Nada...

@jmdepaolis on Twitter


https://www.frankfortstation.com/p/...ll-griffins-roll-past-stevenson-season-opener

 

[RockSoup]

Good work 3OW

 

[Quags22]

You list the Daily Herald. If you go to our football home page, there are 19 game stories. That's right. 19. And that doesn't include roundups of other games that were in the zoned coverages of our papers. So your criticism there is completely off based.

Here is our link: https://football.dailyherald.com/

You will fin that we have 19 more game stories than the Tribune (whose only story about high school football this week was a story about the decrease in participation). We also had 18 more stories than the Sun Times with just OB out there. The Southtown had 1 football story online and the Joliet Herald had nothing.

We have a coverage area that, unfortunately does not cover your Griffins. We pick up scores, just like everyone else from the AP, IHSA website and coaches who call in.If your coach or his staff don't call in a score or at least post it to the IHSA website, no one is going to have it.The days of the Sun Times swat squad with 70 guys out covering a game on a Friday night are over unfortunately.

And finally, how can you lump Edgy into this? Tim is a miracle worker trying to get to whatever places he can. You try driving from the SW suburbs to Warren in Gurnee on a holiday Friday night.

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

Quags the only reason I listed the Daily herald was that I was looking for coverage from the Stevenson point of view since I could not find anything on the game anywhere else Sorry if I offended but shouldn’t you cover Stevenson?

I listed EDGYTIM the web site not Edgy Tim the person because NO ONE posted anything on any of the games.

3orangewhips. Good find. I did a search on Twitter and did not find this. I don’t subscribe to the Frankfort station because I get it for free although a week late and I have enough subscriptions.

 

[Quags22]

Quags the only reason I listed the Daily herald was that I was looking for coverage from the Stevenson point of view since I could not find anything on the game anywhere else Sorry if I offended but shouldn’t you cover Stevenson?

I listed EDGYTIM the web site not Edgy Tim the person because NO ONE posted anything on any of the games.

3orangewhips. Good find. I did a search on Twitter and did not find this. I don’t subscribe to the Frankfort station because I get it for free although a week late and I have enough subscriptions.

I am sure we would have liked to cover that game. The reality is that we usually don't have a person at a game when the distance is very great. It would not be economically feasible for one of our stringers to go to that game when nearly all live in the far NW burbs. We usually rely on calls from the coaches in those instances. And I checked the Lake County edition and we did have a score on the game in the paper this morning.

I was a bit surprised that no one from the Lincoln-Way nation didn't post anything about the game either on Edgy's website. Maybe you can change that next week.

I do understand your frustration. When I worked the desk at the Sun Times back in the day, I wouldn't leave until we had every score in the area. It was a sense of pride to me.

 

[Anon1754760634]

FYI EDGYTIM website is EDGY Tim..solo endeavor for the most part for 24 years and counting...minus a few very valuable contributors ..I was in Gurnee came speeding home attempted to launch my first Live Post Game show via internet and had a wifi issues so no go....otherwise you would of had a one hour live Postgame show with scores from across the state that also was planning to take live calls as well...I'm confident that it will be a go next Friday night (late start 1130PM for various reasons). Also I was on NBCSC High School Lites at 11PM which had scores and a half hour of highlights from across the state....hoping things will improve from my side next week

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

Edgy, I understand where you were. I watched high school lights last night and except a couple minutes really didn’t see anything for the teams I was looking for. There were a lot of special features like Drive, athlete of the week team of the week, Windy City Legrand’s and your interviews but last year they used to run scores at least but not this year..

When I refer to EDGYTIM the web site I mean the people who participate in this web site please do not take it personally. if I can go to a game I post scores but that’s not often these days. I find it hard to believe that no one went to the games that I mentioned above but that’s not the central problem.

The central problem is that our local news media can’t seem to be able to send even an intern to cover and report the games.

 

[CaravanMan]

Edgy, I understand where you were. I watched high school lights last night and except a couple minutes really didn’t see anything for the teams I was looking for. There were a lot of special features like Drive, athlete of the week team of the week, Windy City Legrand’s and your interviews but last year they used to run scores at least but not this year..

When I refer to EDGYTIM the web site I mean the people who participate in this web site please do not take it personally. if I can go to a game I post scores but that’s not often these days. I find it hard to believe that no one went to the games that I mentioned above but that’s not the central problem.

The central problem is that our local news media can’t seem to be able to send even an intern to cover and report the games.

You've identified a need so nice job there. Now, how will YOU help out? Not sure that just complaining will get things fixed to appease you.

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

You've identified a need so nice job there. Now, how will YOU help out? Not sure that just complaining will get things fixed to appease you.

As I said If I am at a game I will post scores. The first step in fixing a problem is to identify it.

 

[CaravanMan]

As I said If I am at a game I will post scores. The first step in fixing a problem is to identify it.

You did that already. Re-read your original post.

 

[Bowie50]

You list the Daily Herald. If you go to our football home page, there are 19 game stories. That's right. 19. And that doesn't include roundups of other games that were in the zoned coverages of our papers. So your criticism there is completely off based.

Here is our link: https://football.dailyherald.com/

You will fin that we have 19 more game stories than the Tribune (whose only story about high school football this week was a story about the decrease in participation). We also had 18 more stories than the Sun Times with just OB out there. The Southtown had 1 football story online and the Joliet Herald had nothing.

We have a coverage area that, unfortunately does not cover your Griffins. We pick up scores, just like everyone else from the AP, IHSA website and coaches who call in.If your coach or his staff don't call in a score or at least post it to the IHSA website, no one is going to have it.The days of the Sun Times swat squad with 70 guys out covering a game on a Friday night are over unfortunately.

And finally, how can you lump Edgy into this? Tim is a miracle worker trying to get to whatever places he can. You try driving from the SW suburbs to Warren in Gurnee on a holiday Friday night.

What are those rankings at the bottom of the site?

 

[Quags22]

What are those rankings at the bottom of the site?

If you mean the team rankings, those are based upon the local teams we cover. So we wouldn't have a Lincoln-Way East listed.

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

If you mean the team rankings, those are based upon the local teams we cover. So we wouldn't have a Lincoln-Way East listed.

Similar to the Southtown, the focus is on local teams

 

[Quags22]

Edgy, I understand where you were. I watched high school lights last night and except a couple minutes really didn’t see anything for the teams I was looking for. There were a lot of special features like Drive, athlete of the week team of the week, Windy City Legrand’s and your interviews but last year they used to run scores at least but not this year..

When I refer to EDGYTIM the web site I mean the people who participate in this web site please do not take it personally. if I can go to a game I post scores but that’s not often these days. I find it hard to believe that no one went to the games that I mentioned above but that’s not the central problem.

The central problem is that our local news media can’t seem to be able to send even an intern to cover and report the games.

I appreciate what you are saying. I too miss the days when I could see nearly ever game in the paper next day with a small roundup of the game.

But it is not 1985 anymore. It's not even 2005.

Newspapers are under fire financially and subscriptions are down. Most HS kids don't even read a newspaper. Everything is done online and people want it for free.

In addition, there just aren't people out there wanting to cover HS football for $50 per game, intern or not.

Tell me how it would be financially prudent for someone to drive from the NW burbs to Frankfort. Then, write a story, probably from a dark parking lot and then drive home. Gas and tolls are about $12. So that leaves you about $38 for a 7 hour day (including drive time).

Would you work for that? didn't think so.

That's why most stringers (including me), stay close to home. Sure, I'll make that drive during playoff time, because I love this game and want us to have the best coverage possible. But, this week we also did not cover many local games, just a short drive away. Why? Because there just aren't people who want to cover HS sports.

The Daily Herald will continue to bring you the best coverage possible. As i said before, we covered nearly 30 games this weekend, including an 8-man football game. And that doesn't include roundups of the games we didn't have a person available to cover the game with. We did have a roundup of the Stevenson-Lincoln Way East game, although it was in Sunday's paper.

What did the superstar Sun Times cover? 3 games. And the mighty Tribune? Zip, nada, nothing. My perception is that the Trib justifies its position by just writing stories that are critical of HS football.

But if you want to see at least one paper that still loves the game check us out at https://football.dailyherald.com/. We have some great people covering games like Schmit, Leusch, Aguillar, Fitzpatrick, Babcock-McGraw, Oberhelman and Schwarz along with our prep editor John Radtke. And quite a few stringers as well. We also have a nice scoreboard for the local games.

And to be fair, I like what the NW Herald has done with HS football as well. Soucie and Joe Stevenson and their guys are really good.

So please don't say that we don't report the games.

 

[Quags22]

Similar to the Southtown, the focus is on local teams[/QUOT

Was the Southtown at your game?

 

[Cross Bones]

Daily Herald has great and extensive coverage. I look forward to what they say about SCN this week.

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

I don’t know Quags, no article has been written. But they’re owned by the tribune now so it’s anyones guess.

 

[MC63]

[QUOTE="Quags57, post: 204979, m
My perception is that the Trib justifies its position by just writing stories that are critical of HS football.

Quote of the decade!

 

[colbert]

As someone who has helped the Rockford Register Star and Sauk Valley Media (Dixon/Sterling area) since 1996, there has been a definite downturn in prep sports reporting, especially with the Register Star.
Sauk Valley still holds their own with a Saturday separate football tab of area games. Seven games had reporters at them and the other eight were covered via a short round-up.
Compared to most other papers around Illinois, they still have solid staffing and make the preps a primary focus over college and pros. But, it is becoming more and more difficlut to put out a quality product with fewer personnel and tighter deadlines.
Sauk Valley owns papers all over the place and also present this very informative product:


The Register Star only featured the Harlem-Hononegah game in Saturday's paper. However they had a full recap page in Sunday's paper.
I look for them to eventually go digital, with the printed product becoming cumbersome.
The bodies aren't there to get out and do games and the entire newspaper, like so many others, is bare bones.

One area that continues to impress me is radio coverage. Not sure how it is for you suburbanites, but we have some excellent radio guys going at it for decades and some games get 2-3 stations covering them.

 

[Undercenter3rd1]

You list the Daily Herald. If you go to our football home page, there are 19 game stories. That's right. 19. And that doesn't include roundups of other games that were in the zoned coverages of our papers. So your criticism there is completely off based.

Here is our link: https://football.dailyherald.com/

You will fin that we have 19 more game stories than the Tribune (whose only story about high school football this week was a story about the decrease in participation). We also had 18 more stories than the Sun Times with just OB out there. The Southtown had 1 football story online and the Joliet Herald had nothing.

We have a coverage area that, unfortunately does not cover your Griffins. We pick up scores, just like everyone else from the AP, IHSA website and coaches who call in.If your coach or his staff don't call in a score or at least post it to the IHSA website, no one is going to have it.The days of the Sun Times swat squad with 70 guys out covering a game on a Friday night are over unfortunately.

And finally, how can you lump Edgy into this? Tim is a miracle worker trying to get to whatever places he can. You try driving from the SW suburbs to Warren in Gurnee on a holiday Friday night.

A lot of people don’t know that you have to go into daily herald Hs football and then you get all the articles.Which has everything you need.If not go to IHSA scorezone for the scores

 

[Still Missing34]

Check out Friday Night Drive, there is a fee, but they cover a ton of ground.

 

[Quags22]

I see Lincoln Way East is the Friday Night game of the week. Looks like LWeastdad can get his fix at least this week.

 

[WIU@78]

Takes a Naperville to get us the perch Quags. How is your son doing? CU grad is not coming back to Frankfort here....

 

[LTHSALUM76]

I was reading the paper this morning at breakfast looking for coverage of the games for some of the teams I am interested in last night.

There was NONE

Not the Tribune
Not the Sun Times
Not the Southtown
Not the Joliet Herald
Not the Daily Herald
Not EDGYTIM
Not High School Lites
Not even the friggen Patch

I know that the papers were reducing their staff but this is ridiculous! You can't even get a score anymore unless you're a CCL team or the West suburbs. Those scores were everywhere.

I call BS on your being a subscriber of the Herald News. If you were, you would know they don't publish a paper on Saturdays or holidays and haven't in years. All the local scores were in the Sunday edition. I get that paper along with the Sun Times and Tribune and I knew the HS scores wouldn't be in either Saturday edition. High School sports coverage is pretty rare in the Sun Times. At least compared to what it used to be. And I am not sure if it is even in the Trib anymore. I stopped looking for it a long time ago.

 

[olderbytheminute]

A lot of people don’t know that you have to go into daily herald Hs football and then you get all the articles.Which has everything you need.If not go to IHSA scorezone for the scores

Here's the problem, and I am not blaming anybody because the finances at the Daily Herald may not be much different than the financial situation at other struggling publications (see Rob Feder's recent report on Daily Herald offering employee buyouts to shrink the staff and get a better handle on cost). Anyway, as for the problem, the football fan has to PAY to read the high school football stories in the Daily Herald. As somebody who is collecting social security and pays close attention to cents as well as dollars, the idea of paying to read a game story online is not something that is particularly desirable. And that includes the fact that game coverage of "MY" team (no, I don't have a team, but I could have and I am sure other people do) is hit-or-miss which makes paying a non-starter. Would I like to know what happened at the end of the Carmel of Mundelein vs. Libertyville game last Friday night/ Yep. And if I was paying, I would get to read it. But that said, as Carmel of Mundelein falls into non-playoff-contender status (not a commentary or prediction, but just using this as an example), there is no way of knowing if Carmel of Mundelein games will have a Daily Herald reporter attending. It will be hit or miss. Will the Daily Herald send a reporter to cover the Carmel of Mundelein at Marian Central of Woodstock game, for example, if both teams are middling-type clubs? The "firewall" or "paywall", call it what you will, creates a situation in which for me, the more realistic option is spending time searching the internet for any/all reports of games of interest. Obviously, this particular forum works well to get info on some of the Chicago area's better teams. Sometimes I think 78 percent of the participants on this site live or used to live in New Lenox, but that's OK. This is free and everybody who wants to has the opportunity to participate. With a newspaper paywall, not everybody has the opportunity to read. And that's a shame. Nothing online is worse than one of the participants here giving an address to call up to see something, only to find out that calling up the address gets me a commercial for online paying.

 

[WIU@78]

I call BS on your being a subscriber of the Herald News. If you were, you would know they don't publish a paper on Saturdays or holidays and haven't in years. All the local scores were in the Sunday edition. I get that paper along with the Sun Times and Tribune and I knew the HS scores wouldn't be in either Saturday edition. High School sports coverage is pretty rare in the Sun Times. At least compared to what it used to be. And I am not sure if it is even in the Trib anymore. I stopped looking for it a long time ago.

Joliet Herald News?

 

[Quags22]

Here's the problem, and I am not blaming anybody because the finances at the Daily Herald may not be much different than the financial situation at other struggling publications (see Rob Feder's recent report on Daily Herald offering employee buyouts to shrink the staff and get a better handle on cost). Anyway, as for the problem, the football fan has to PAY to read the high school football stories in the Daily Herald. As somebody who is collecting social security and pays close attention to cents as well as dollars, the idea of paying to read a game story online is not something that is particularly desirable. And that includes the fact that game coverage of "MY" team (no, I don't have a team, but I could have and I am sure other people do) is hit-or-miss which makes paying a non-starter. Would I like to know what happened at the end of the Carmel of Mundelein vs. Libertyville game last Friday night/ Yep. And if I was paying, I would get to read it. But that said, as Carmel of Mundelein falls into non-playoff-contender status (not a commentary or prediction, but just using this as an example), there is no way of knowing if Carmel of Mundelein games will have a Daily Herald reporter attending. It will be hit or miss. Will the Daily Herald send a reporter to cover the Carmel of Mundelein at Marian Central of Woodstock game, for example, if both teams are middling-type clubs? The "firewall" or "paywall", call it what you will, creates a situation in which for me, the more realistic option is spending time searching the internet for any/all reports of games of interest. Obviously, this particular forum works well to get info on some of the Chicago area's better teams. Sometimes I think 78 percent of the participants on this site live or used to live in New Lenox, but that's OK. This is free and everybody who wants to has the opportunity to participate. With a newspaper paywall, not everybody has the opportunity to read. And that's a shame. Nothing online is worse than one of the participants here giving an address to call up to see something, only to find out that calling up the address gets me a commercial for online paying.

I can appreciate the fact that you are on a a fixed budget as I will be there soon. However, I am assuming you had a job when you worked. And somebody made money along the way so you can get paid.

It is the same way for people in the news business. They would like to get paid as well. So giving things away for free, doesn't make much sense.

You are obviously aware of what is happening in the news industry (since you are citing Feder). When you get things for free, you get what you pay for.

 

[Quags22]

Takes a Naperville to get us the perch Quags. How is your son doing? CU grad is not coming back to Frankfort here....

He is well thanks. Still out East and just completed his Phd. Hard when the kids aren't around.

 

[woody6]

Disabato's public twitter feed via http://coachscornershow.com/ provides dozens of scores and updates from games involving Southland teams on both Fridays and Saturdays.

 

[anon_4vszfu35bv677]

Looks like the next coverage of LWE by the Southtown will be the first

 

[iamgroot_rivals225093]

I was reading the paper this morning at breakfast looking for coverage of the games for some of the teams I am interested in last night.

There was NONE

Not the Tribune
Not the Sun Times
Not the Southtown
Not the Joliet Herald
Not the Daily Herald
Not EDGYTIM
Not High School Lites
Not even the friggen Patch

I know that the papers were reducing their staff but this is ridiculous! You can't even get a score anymore unless you're a CCL team or the West suburbs. Those scores were everywhere.

IHSA posts something like this every week:

 

[iamgroot_rivals225093]

Here is this weeks: