Every week I hear from longtime readers and Indians fans who are beside themselves because the score from the previous night’s game is not in The Plain Dealer.
Some register their dismay by noting the times the games ended. They can’t believe our deadlines are that early.
If we are late in the season, they sometimes note that we had a Browns score in the paper even though the game ended much later than an Indians game earlier in the week, for which the score was not in the paper.
Some go so far as to question our motive, wondering whether we slight the Indians because of the political incorrectness of the team name.
There’s no conspiracy here. The answer is about deadlines. They are earlier today than they were years ago. And because of production schedules, we don’t have the same deadline every night.
I guarantee you this, though: If the Indians game ends before our deadline that night, the score is in the paper.
Production schedules and belt-tightening are the reasons deadlines are earlier these days, and we long have advocated that our Indians audience rely on cleveland.com for the latest news. Beat writers Paul Hoynes and Joe Noga publish scores, game accounts and other breaking news on the site as they happen. We encourage readers to rely on the newspaper more for columns and analysis.
And yes, on rare occasions, we do manage to go a bit later than normal to get a key Browns or Ohio State Buckeyes game into the paper. Those teams play about a tenth as many games as the Indians, so exceptions are easier to justify. If the Indians were in a key playoff game, we would make the exception for them, too.
Driving a big part of this is how the paper is delivered. Once upon a time, newspapers had full control over fleets of delivery trucks to carry their editions far and wide. The need for efficiency has consolidated delivery fleets. The truck that carries The Plain Dealer also carries other newspapers these days. If we don’t get our bundles of papers to the depots by the time those trucks are ready to go, they go without our editions.
The website is the answer, on your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Full access is included in all subscriptions to The Plain Dealer. The Indians news online is always the very latest. Perhaps the simplest way to engage is with our cleveland.com apps for your phone, available in the various app stores for free.
The other question I regularly receive is about the stories that get the biggest play on the front page. Sometimes, those stories are lighter fare compared to the hard news elsewhere on the page, and people ask why the most important news of the day is not always played the biggest.
We have long discussions each day about what goes on the front page, and the mix often changes right up until deadline. But we don’t aim the most important story into the big play spot every day. Sometimes, when we have some terrific photos to accompany a story we’ve chosen for page 1, we give that story the play spot, to feature the pictures prominently. We’ve never said the story we play the biggest is the one we consider the most important.
Choosing stories for page 1 is an interesting exercise. Some days, the task is easy. Three or four stories clearly deserve to be there. On slower days, we try to mix up what goes out there, to keep the page interesting.
All this to say, please don’t interpret the front page play of stories to mean we value one over another. We value all of the stories we put on the front page. It’s why they are there.
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