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Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:12 am
by ATPTourFan
thx sharing that link

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:35 am
by TruePoint
I was willing to just let this thread fade away, but now that it's popped back up, I just want to say that I regret criticizing Bill for doing his job. Obviously my anger was with the projo, and I stand by that. I think it is inexcusable to handle the situation the way they did. I've said enough on that, and not looking to argue it all over again. But to the extent Bill got rolled up into that criticism, that was my frustration and anger coming through. As I said even in my original post when I was at my angriest, I like Bill and I think Bill does an excellent job covering URI basketball. As RR02 pointed out to me, and I totally agree with him, Bill's coverage of URI basketball far surpasses the coverage we got before he landed the gig at the projo, or from anywhere else for most of my life.

My beef is not with Bill, but I definitely have a problem with the way his paper covers URI - it's not just how they cover our sports, but how the journal as an institution regards URI as an institution and how that is apparent in its overall URI coverage in any section of the paper. I think it is undeniable that, over the course of decades, that coverage has done real damage to URI's relationship with the public in the state. The coverage of the football game this past weekend is a symptom, not the disease itself. When someone sent me the picture of the paper, I blew my top. So I'm sorry to Bill to the extent that I was unfair to him, but I'm not sorry for going in on the projo.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:48 am
by RhowdyRam02
I think that's a solid apology to Bill and a fine recognition of his work.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:56 am
by ramster
RhodyAlum wrote:Boston Globe did an excellent job of covering the game; the online version doesn't represent what was printed; blurb on the front of the sports page and a half page story with a picture.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/colle ... story.html
Boston Herald had some good articles as well....

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/coll ... ng_stories

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/coll ... ling_after

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 5:20 pm
by rjsuperfly66
I don't think I would be using the Herald as a barometer for the coverage the Projo should provide -- The Projo is just another dying print media. In 2005, they did 164K on weekdays and 231K on Sundays. In 2011, they did 94K on weekdays and 129K on Sundays. Today they do 56K on weekdays and 72K on Sundays. They have really spread their resources thin which leads towards overall a limited staff and situations where they have to make tough decisions on who is going to cover what. And if you think the Projo is going to front-page an AP story when they are paying full-time staff for their work, you are crazy. They definitely did not make the wrong decision on what to cover this weekend, but if you want to be aggravated for past coverage, than I probably wouldn't blame you for that.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 5:33 pm
by TruePoint
I made the point in one of my posts in this thread that one of the reasons for the disparate treatment of the two game stories is that Bill wrote a big story on the Brown game and an algorithm wrote the URI blurb. But that is not an excuse, it is specifically part of my issue. If circumstances leave you shorthanded, I don't think the Brown game is so much more interesting than the URI game to justify pulling the URI beat reporter off the URI game to cover the Brown game.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 6:05 pm
by UCH21377
The Projo is probably 5 years from extinction. I still subscribe but I'm a dinosaur. And it's a shitty paper to boot. TP you're probably wasting your anger

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 6:08 pm
by rjsuperfly66
TruePoint wrote:I made the point in one of my posts in this thread that one of the reasons for the disparate treatment of the two game stories is that Bill wrote a big story on the Brown game and an algorithm wrote the URI blurb. But that is not an excuse, it is specifically part of my issue. If circumstances leave you shorthanded, I don't think the Brown game is so much more interesting than the URI game to justify pulling the URI beat reporter off the URI game to cover the Brown game.
I think the reality is that the Projo looked at it and saw that they had two local teams playing each other in a game that has been fairly interested and felt that as far as local coverage goes, there would be more interest in reading about Brown vs. Bryant than there would about URI vs. Harvard. And so they took Koch and allocated him appropriately to cover the needs they felt were more important for their readership. I've never seen where Koch is exclusive to URI coverage other than the fact he does cover mostly URI basketball and football.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:13 pm
by ramster
rjsuperfly66 wrote:I don't think I would be using the Herald as a barometer for the coverage the Projo should provide -- The Projo is just another dying print media. In 2005, they did 164K on weekdays and 231K on Sundays. In 2011, they did 94K on weekdays and 129K on Sundays. Today they do 56K on weekdays and 72K on Sundays. They have really spread their resources thin which leads towards overall a limited staff and situations where they have to make tough decisions on who is going to cover what. And if you think the Projo is going to front-page an AP story when they are paying full-time staff for their work, you are crazy. They definitely did not make the wrong decision on what to cover this weekend, but if you want to be aggravated for past coverage, than I probably wouldn't blame you for that.
Sorry, don't buy it.
URI's first time, upset victory over Harvard, the favorite to win the Ivy League should have been on the front page of the Sports Section. Nothing can convince me otherwise.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 2:01 pm
by Iggy1979
I'm coming late to this...
Bill was hired to cover URI basketball and high school sports. The Projo hired one person to fill two positions. And like everyone in a newsroom these days he covers other things, too. To say he's the URI reporter is misleading. And to say he should've refused to cover Brown-Bryant is naive.
The one legitimate complaint, IMHO, here is the play of the story. URI beating Harvard should've received better play. The placement was dictated by the fact that they didn't have anyone at the game, but they could've had someone embellish the URI press release and put it on the sports cover.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:11 pm
by ramster
Iggy1979 wrote:I'm coming late to this...
Bill was hired to cover URI basketball and high school sports. The Projo hired one person to fill two positions. And like everyone in a newsroom these days he covers other things, too. To say he's the URI reporter is misleading. And to say he should've refused to cover Brown-Bryant is naive.
The one legitimate complaint, IMHO, here is the play of the story. URI beating Harvard should've received better play. The placement was dictated by the fact that they didn't have anyone at the game, but they could've had someone embellish the URI press release and put it on the sports cover.
Completely agree. Whether Bill Koch covered the game, or someone else covered it does not matter to me. Putting the URI huge upset victory over Ivy League favorite Harvard was a front page story not a page C9 story. Should have been front page. Who wrote it and where Bryant - Brown was located is irrelevant to me. Numerous stories can and do make up the front page of sportscdvery day. Buried on C-7 was clueless of the projo.

And Roth repeating, I may be the biggest Projo fan on Blue but they missed this one.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:43 pm
by ramfan85
Also late to the party. But, I completely agree with Iggy and Ramster.
When I was in college out West, more often than not, I would have preferred being on the 7th page. But, that's another issue. And, it never happened.
IMO, the reason they didn't put it on the front page is because it wasn't written by a staff reporter. Even though, they missed the boat on his one.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 4:51 pm
by TruePoint
Iggy1979 wrote:I'm coming late to this...
Bill was hired to cover URI basketball and high school sports. The Projo hired one person to fill two positions. And like everyone in a newsroom these days he covers other things, too. To say he's the URI reporter is misleading. And to say he should've refused to cover Brown-Bryant is naive.
The one legitimate complaint, IMHO, here is the play of the story. URI beating Harvard should've received better play. The placement was dictated by the fact that they didn't have anyone at the game, but they could've had someone embellish the URI press release and put it on the sports cover.
My saying that Bill should've refused to cover the Brown game was part of a rant. I hope that people realize that is I do not genuinely believe he should've refused the assignment. For the most part, I agree with your take. The thing that set me off was the Brown game on p1 and the URI game on p7, and my frustration that Bill was asked to cover the Brown game despite URI being much more his regular beat is mostly based on the fact that it is obvious the Brown story was on p1 because their reporter wrote a big piece on it and URI was on p7 because they had a computer-generated stub piece.

As I said above, I feel bad about putting any of the blame on Bill in my initial comments. Those came from a place of unchecked anger. Unfortunately I think that also took away from my main point, which I think was fair, that the projo should've given more attention and prominence to what is a rare good accomplishment by Rhody football, and instead it was buried.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:07 pm
by Puck Frovidence
Don't buy the "dying print" explanation. To the ProJos credit, they are much less negative towards URI than the clowns at GoLocal, who seem downright venomous toward the school. In the past few years they have delivered groundless and embellished clickbait hatchet job after hatchet job. I'm sorry but not rolling out the red carpet of press coverage because our demonstrably terrible 1-AA team won its yearly victory (over an unranked team) hardly compares to the shit that GoLocal has piled on. Especially considering there was an instate matchup between two other slightly less terrible 1-AA teams that day.

The ProJo isnt great and is trending downwards but expecting front sports page coverage just because the broken watch that is URI football happened to hit upon the time of season when it was right is hardly reasonable. They'll need to do more than that.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:17 pm
by theblueram
Brown has won a couple Ivy League Championships not to long ago. URI has won what? 4 games in 5 years? Surprised they weren't on the back page.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:38 pm
by NYGFan_Section208
Actually...back page is much better placement than page 7.... ;-)

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 1:46 am
by Puck Frovidence
.....aaaaand that my friends is the sound of the other shoe dropping. It ain't hard to tell why front page real estate is not forthcoming.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:00 am
by ramster
To me it has nothing to do with Bill Koch or what Brown has done in the past. Heck, Brown just got beat handily by the same Harvard team that URI beat. Bryant got desttoyed by Maine.

Bottom line URI vs Harvard was a huge upset that projo buried on page 7. No matter who wrote the article, that news was as much or more worthy than Brown Bryant. And for those who say it was a more popular game due to instate rivalry, well, the Harvard URI game had more people at it than Brown Harvard.

I like the Prijo and always have. Don't care what the future of the paper is, just a simple mistake to put iti Harvard on C7.

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:48 am
by TruePoint
Puck Frovidence wrote:.....aaaaand that my friends is the sound of the other shoe dropping. It ain't hard to tell why front page real estate is not forthcoming.
All due respect...what the hell are you talking about? Losing to a good team on the road is not exactly an unexpected disaster for this program, and has nothing to do with last week's game or how it should have been covered. You don't have to go undefeated to justify coverage in your home paper. I don't know where the UNH game story is in today's paper, but it should be on the front page of sports or close to it. That isn't only for winning. That's where all the D1 football games belong in the local paper.

The thought process that would lead a person to connect losing a game this week to how a game was covered last week is mysterious to me. Everyone knew they were going to lose the game yesterday, so why even wait until after the game to make this stupid point?

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 9:22 am
by ramster
Puck Frovidence wrote:.....aaaaand that my friends is the sound of the other shoe dropping. It ain't hard to tell why front page real estate is not forthcoming.
Huh????
What shoe dropping?
Can you explain further?

Next week Brown - URI will be front page
I'd expect URI to be front page for their homecoming - family weekend game in October.

My only beef was with the Harvard - URI game not being front page. Only that.


Today's stories in projo:
Bryant - Fordham front page - homecoming for Bryant
Brown - Harvard page 8
URI - New Hampshire page 9

Re: ProJo Does it Again

Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:21 pm
by Puck Frovidence
Yeah that was not one of my better posts clarity wise lol. I just mean that despite the excitement URI fans may from a Harvard win, to average Projo readership (and I'm assuming the editorial staff), it's just the team's annual victory. Despite sucking, most years Rhody manages to steal at least one and without any other momentum to back it up it seems like a fair decision from the Projo to treat the win as page 7 news...especially considering the subsequent result this weekend. Yeah UNH is good, but they gave up 51 points last week and Maine deserved to win that opener. URI not giving them more of a game this weekend could be seen (not by members of this board, I know) as a confirmation that the Harvard win was not really a big deal. I know you think D1 FB belongs on the front page but I'm not sure that the majority of readers feel that way about 1-AA ball. Esp not for a team known for being lousy.

I agree though that next weekend's game will be big news. Instate rivalry, vulnerable Brown team, improved URI team and since it's the ProJo it gets a "+3 importance points" for being in Prov.