Box Scores

[happen18]

How do the "prep" box scores get published? Who sends the stats in?

[crazy8s]

Typically the home team will call the game results in, provide box score, etc. Sometimes in tournaments, especially when out of town, both team will call in to their respective papers, tv etc. The Courier Journal has had very little coverage in games outside Jefferson Co this year. Not sure if schools not calling in or if CJ is really that bad.

[Jim Schue]

Typically the home team will call the game results in, provide box score, etc. Sometimes in tournaments, especially when out of town, both team will call in to their respective papers, tv etc. The Courier Journal has had very little coverage in games outside Jefferson Co this year. Not sure if schools not calling in or if CJ is really that bad.

 

The biggest problem with the C-J is their silly early deadline. Unless a game gets done by 8pm, you can hang it up as far as it getting in the next day's edition. But space has a lot to do with it as well. The print version of the C-J today is about a third as thick as it was 10 years ago.

 

Everything goes online, though, as long as your school doesn't take the approach of "I don't know why I bother calling it in; it's never in the paper the next day."

 

But in general, it has everything to do with the shrinking space in the daily paper, whatever paper it is. Newsprint is expensive. The Internet, not so much.

 

Many smaller local papers simply quit running box scores because they could save several column inches taken up by them and instead use that space to include another story. A necessary strategic move, really, given the expansion of HS sports in recent years.

 

If your local paper covers, say, 4-5 high schools, and it's just a weekly or three-times weekly paper, then the two inches of space the box score takes up adds up quick. With a ton of new sports being added to the high school menu by way of wrestling, swimming, archery, bowling or whatever else, cutting five box scores out of a paper means being able to get one more story from one of the fringe sports into the paper, and pleasing that segment of the readership.