LFN: Media Day Mashup

[Lehigh Football Nation]

I mashed up all the press coverage on Media Day - which basically consisted of me, the Easton Express-Times, and the Morning Call. I was waiting for the reports of media day to roll in.. and I'm still waiting. Can't folks anywhere else do better than that? xmadx

http://lehighfootballnation.blogspot.com

I mean, I go to media day and I get 4 blog postings and over 1 week's worth of features on Lehigh alone.

[CrusaderBob]

LFN,

True there was some news this year, but for the most part these media days are generally non-events. The press release gives you the pre-season voting results and most of the schools put out thier own quotes for genral consumption.

Most of the readers in Worcester, Hamilton, Lewisburg, etc. are not get-a-lifers liek us. Do they really care what Frank Tavani had to say about replacing Maurer? Probably not.

A month before the season starts, there just is not that much interest. In Worcester anyway, there are just too many other sports competing for attention and attracting interest - Red Sox, Worcester Tornadoes, Patriots. Sending a reporter 4 - 5 hours away to (in most years anyway) get coach-speak quotes just doesn't make sense in this day and age, even for a paper that covers a city/area the size of Worcester.

I know the T&G does a preview of the HC season the week before the opening game and that covers what the vast majority of what the local fans are looking for - stuff about Holy Cross - that is obtained at the local HC media day.

Sad to us - and a lot of other HC fans who remember way back when - but unfortunately true.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

In Worcester anyway, there are just too many other sports competing for attention and attracting interest - Red Sox, Worcester Tornadoes, Patriots. Sending a reporter 4 - 5 hours away to (in most years anyway) get coach-speak quotes just doesn't make sense in this day and age, even for a paper that covers a city/area the size of Worcester.

I know the T&G does a preview of the HC season the week before the opening game and that covers what the vast majority of what the local fans are looking for - stuff about Holy Cross - that is obtained at the local HC media day.

Let me get this straight. Minor league baseball is of more interest than Holy Cross sports? xoopsx It's even worse than I thought! Of course, if folks want more Holy Cross coverage they're going to have to demand it from their local paper.

Having been to the media days, there is more to media days than hearing a lot of quotes about players giving 110% and taking it one game at a time. It's a time for the "big issues" of the league - and it so happened that this year had more news than most.

I question your assertion that the HC media day and T&G coverage "covers the vast majority of what the local fans are looking for". In the past I have found that papers can be a remarkably poor judge of what readers want (see: Election '08 and countless articles on Hillary Clinton). I'd say most readers don't know there is a Patriot League Media Day or a possible move afoot to scholarships, so they can't/don't demand it.

[CrusaderBob]

Let me get this straight. Minor league baseball is of more interest than Holy Cross sports? xoopsx It's even worse than I thought! Of course, if folks want more Holy Cross coverage they're going to have to demand it from their local paper.

Having been to the media days, there is more to media days than hearing a lot of quotes about players giving 110% and taking it one game at a time. It's a time for the "big issues" of the league - and it so happened that this year had more news than most.

I question your assertion that the HC media day and T&G coverage "covers the vast majority of what the local fans are looking for". In the past I have found that papers can be a remarkably poor judge of what readers want (see: Election '08 and countless articles on Hillary Clinton). I'd say most readers don't know there is a Patriot League Media Day or a possible move afoot to scholarships, so they can't/don't demand it.

Believe it or not, in early August, yes the Tornadoes have more of the local attention than Holy Cross football. This year the Tornadoes, playing 0.500 ball, are drawing in the vicinity of 3000 fans per game. In a newpaper with about 3 pages of sports coverage, one of them standings and box scores, the TYPICAL Patriot League media day is not a story. I will agree that this year was not a typical media day, but when was the last time any news of this magnitude came out of media day?

I won't disagree that newspapers don't know their readers as well as they should but, and Gilmore & Kelly talking about scholarships was huge and definitely would have been worth the trip for any of the papers that cover the PL. But, given the history of the event, was the talk of re-naming the division (last year's news) or quotes about the rule changes (last spring's news) - the stuff more typical of media day - really worth sending a reporter on a 250 mile trip?

I'll drop the editors of the T&G a note and see if they run a story before their typical pre-season preview.