Timesfreelanceguy
11-20-2008, 01:21 AM
Met with the sports leadership in freelanceguyland tonight. My wrestling proposals didn't get me laughed out of the building, so I'm encouraged by that.
We have been writing online wrapups since mid-September. Those will continue this winter. It looks like we're adding a day to the mix, Friday, which won't affect wrestling much. But the other three days we'll do them are heavy wrestling days -- Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, for the next day's publication -- and I'll be making wrestling the lead as often as I can. Which is to say, very often.
Disclaimer at this point for the geographically challenged. My position in freelanceguyland largely directs me to focus on Iowa more heavily than Illinois. It's business. We sell more papers in Iowa, we focus on Iowa first. I would say that, in order to sell more papers in Illinois, we should focus on Illinois at least as much or more, but I slept through a lot of business classes in college, so I could be getting that wrong.
I'm going to be the lead writer for wrestling this year, and proposals are floating out there to cover one dual every Thursday as an online story at www.qcvarsity.com (http://www.qcvarsity.com). Thursday is the heaviest dual night out west, on both sides of the river. I even floated the idea of readers voting on which dual I'm sent to go cover. It's in development, hopefully. We got a lot of good responses in covering an Area Game of the Week during football season. I'd be interested to see, for example, how -- just as an example, these are not on the same night -- Aledo vs. Orion going head-to-head with Moline vs. United Township in an online poll, with two or three Iowa duals also in the mix.
I did get a commitment to cover, for the Sunday print edition, a tournament event every week through the post-season. My schedule is already sort of thought out in my head. Illinois is well-represented on that schedule, though how I'm going to hit both the Geneseo tournament and the Mississippi Athletic Conference meet (where our largest Iowa schools are situated) on the same day is already posing a logistical conundrum. It'll be fun to try to double, though.
We're going to do rankings, with records, in the print edition once per week, and more than likely we'll refer readers online, where every starter for every local team will have their record listed. If I can get enough results reported -- and that is a daily priority of mine, 100 percent reporting of all duals and tournaments. If I can ingest enough Monster drinks each week, I'll even have something to say about each starter's good wins -- and maybe bad losses -- on a weekly basis.
The last might really be a flyer, so I'll keep that under my hat. It's more a behind-the-scenes thing anyway. Let's just say that seeing accurate, clean, consistent wrestling results in the paper I represent is extremely important to me.
Welp, I have emails to write to my coaches, kids to contact for our preview package (appearing Dec. 4; not my idea, but that's when most Iowa teams start), and things to do for other, lesser sports as well.
NO SLEEP UNTIL BLOOMINGTON...and Cedar Rapids as well. Hey, maybe D3 nationals are in my future this season.
We have been writing online wrapups since mid-September. Those will continue this winter. It looks like we're adding a day to the mix, Friday, which won't affect wrestling much. But the other three days we'll do them are heavy wrestling days -- Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, for the next day's publication -- and I'll be making wrestling the lead as often as I can. Which is to say, very often.
Disclaimer at this point for the geographically challenged. My position in freelanceguyland largely directs me to focus on Iowa more heavily than Illinois. It's business. We sell more papers in Iowa, we focus on Iowa first. I would say that, in order to sell more papers in Illinois, we should focus on Illinois at least as much or more, but I slept through a lot of business classes in college, so I could be getting that wrong.
I'm going to be the lead writer for wrestling this year, and proposals are floating out there to cover one dual every Thursday as an online story at www.qcvarsity.com (http://www.qcvarsity.com). Thursday is the heaviest dual night out west, on both sides of the river. I even floated the idea of readers voting on which dual I'm sent to go cover. It's in development, hopefully. We got a lot of good responses in covering an Area Game of the Week during football season. I'd be interested to see, for example, how -- just as an example, these are not on the same night -- Aledo vs. Orion going head-to-head with Moline vs. United Township in an online poll, with two or three Iowa duals also in the mix.
I did get a commitment to cover, for the Sunday print edition, a tournament event every week through the post-season. My schedule is already sort of thought out in my head. Illinois is well-represented on that schedule, though how I'm going to hit both the Geneseo tournament and the Mississippi Athletic Conference meet (where our largest Iowa schools are situated) on the same day is already posing a logistical conundrum. It'll be fun to try to double, though.
We're going to do rankings, with records, in the print edition once per week, and more than likely we'll refer readers online, where every starter for every local team will have their record listed. If I can get enough results reported -- and that is a daily priority of mine, 100 percent reporting of all duals and tournaments. If I can ingest enough Monster drinks each week, I'll even have something to say about each starter's good wins -- and maybe bad losses -- on a weekly basis.
The last might really be a flyer, so I'll keep that under my hat. It's more a behind-the-scenes thing anyway. Let's just say that seeing accurate, clean, consistent wrestling results in the paper I represent is extremely important to me.
Welp, I have emails to write to my coaches, kids to contact for our preview package (appearing Dec. 4; not my idea, but that's when most Iowa teams start), and things to do for other, lesser sports as well.
NO SLEEP UNTIL BLOOMINGTON...and Cedar Rapids as well. Hey, maybe D3 nationals are in my future this season.