More on coverage changes for the Stars

Here’s a little more on the changes coming for the coverage of the Stars in the our local newspapers. I talked to both Mike Heika and Tracey Myers today during the media conclave out in Frisco. For Mike, not much is going to change. He continues as the Stars beat writer for the Dallas Morning News and his stuff will appear in both his paper and in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. As for Tracey, she is off the Stars beat here in a couple weeks, but will continue to work for the Star-Telegram. She’s not sure what she will be doing yet.

As for the blogging world, it’s still not clear. Obviously, Mike keeps blogging over at the Morning News. What happens to the blog at the Star-Telegram is still unclear. It may be that Mike’s posts end up over there too. Time will tell on all that.

Needless to say, I find all this pretty disappointing but it’s the reality of the new world order in the deliver of information. It’s tough times for the newspaper business. The world has changed, newspapers are struggling to adjust and it’s caused a lot of upheaval.

Management at both papers could argue that there is duplicate content with two papers having two writers covering the same stuff every day.  There are times that happens when events merit that and over the long course of the season both writers probably end up doing a lot of the same stuff but at different times. You can save money by just having one guy do it for both papers. Makes sense from that perspective.

But even when two people are out there covering the same stuff it doesn’t mean they crank out exact same story. On most days the stories are different. When the stories are the same topic there may be a slightly different angle on the story or maybe different quotes used within story.

What this is all does is take away some of the variety out of the coverage of the Stars in the local papers. Instead of getting two different takes on the happenings around the Stars on a daily basis, it’s down to one because it will be the same story in both papers. It will be still quality coverage because Mike Heika is doing it, but I think Tracey did a great job as well and brought her own perspective to things. There will still be columnists from both papers kicking in their stuff now and then, but on a daily basis - the real grind of covering the team - the coverage takes a hit.

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