clt found this comical

49ers Basketball Forum 🏀
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[QUOTE=Mike_Persinger;327129]I’d say the coverage now and 20 years ago is roughly the same. When I got to the Observer 20 years ago, we had a much heavier presence in South Carolina, an entire edition in fact that swapped out N.C. stories for Clemson and South Carolina and circulated widely and aggressively in York, Chester and Lancaster counties. The Hornets were amazingly hot (I arrived in part because of their birth) once the Kurt Rambis tip-in beat the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls on Dec. 23, 1988, starting a streak of more than 400 straight sellouts of Charlotte Coliseum and its 23,000-plus seats. The Panthers did not yet exist, we had five or six stories on the front page most days (now we have three or four) on a page that was almost two inches wider than today’s front page and the same length.

That was a different world, but at that time we had one reporter based in Raleigh to cover the ACC and Stan Olson covered the Niners (and other things). Now we have one reporter based in Raleigh (we still fill in with others from the Charlotte office when necessary). We had one NASCAR reporter then, now we have most of two people.

While Raleigh has every right to consider itself the paper of record on the ACC – they have a reporter for each of the Triangle schools plus two or three others who float, plus columnists – that doesn’t mean we should do less on the ACC. Our readership is intensely interested. I’m not going to look up the TV numbers and don’t have to. If anyone else could draw the same numbers here, you can rest assured they’d have a local TV contract. You will see more cooperation on the ACC going forward between us and our now-sister paper in Raleigh. That’s another thing that’s vastly different from 20 years ago, or even two years ago. They used to be the competition, and now we’re basically becoming one staff.

Between the N&Os staff and ours, we have lots of reporting muscle to use, on the web and in print.[/QUOTE]

clt says thanks for the response. it is great to know that the o hasn’t adapted to the hundreds of thousands who moved here who could care less about the acc and clt’s niners. clt is not trying to be an ass, but can you really wonder why the o’s readership is down. you have to adjust. charlotte is not what it was 20 years ago. unc charlotte is not what it was 20 years ago.

clt is not trashing mike p, but encouraging him to focus on us, davidson, jc smith, as well as the national teams rather than covering what color roy william’s’ panties are that day. less care than you think.

those who don’t care aren’t buying the paper anymore.

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[QUOTE=cltniners;327130]clt says thanks for the response. it is great to know that the o hasn’t adapted to the hundreds of thousands who moved here who could care less about the acc and clt’s niners. clt is not trying to be an ass, but can you really wonder why the o’s readership is down. you have to adjust. charlotte is not what it was 20 years ago. unc charlotte is not what it was 20 years ago.

clt is not trashing mike p, but encouraging him to focus on us, davidson, jc smith, as well as the national teams rather than covering what color roy william’s’ panties are that day. less care than you think.

those who don’t care aren’t buying the paper anymore.[/QUOTE]

I wish there was an easy answer. I’m afraid the long-term answer is all those and more, with fewer people, and publishing it on the web primarily. But the web is market-driven, too. Advertisers are looking for 100,000 or more page views per week before they’ll advertise. We can’t do that with just the Niners, or just Davidson, or just Smith, or even just those three. It takes more eyeballs.

Interesting that you want hyper local and national, but not what’s in between. I sense that’s because you hate the Tar Heels, based on your Roy Williams comment.

There are things in the paper I don’t care for and don’t want to read about, so I don’t read about them. It’s easy to turn the page, not click the link, search for what you want, bookmark the Niners page. Jim does a great job of covering you. I still haven’t seen disagreement on that. I think the coverage of the last season was both fair and appropriate.

Rick Thames’ Q&A addresses another college question or two in the lastest posting, including one from someone probably on this board, by the way. Pertains to football.

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[QUOTE=Mike_Persinger;327132]I wish there was an easy answer. I’m afraid the long-term answer is all those and more, with fewer people, and publishing it on the web primarily. But the web is market-driven, too. Advertisers are looking for 100,000 or more page views per week before they’ll advertise. We can’t do that with just the Niners, or just Davidson, or just Smith, or even just those three. It takes more eyeballs.

Interesting that you want hyper local and national, but not what’s in between. I sense that’s because you hate the Tar Heels, based on your Roy Williams comment.

There are things in the paper I don’t care for and don’t want to read about, so I don’t read about them. It’s easy to turn the page, not click the link, search for what you want, bookmark the Niners page. Jim does a great job of covering you. I still haven’t seen disagreement on that. I think the coverage of the last season was both fair and appropriate.

Rick Thames’ Q&A addresses another college question or two in the lastest posting, including one from someone probably on this board, by the way. Pertains to football.[/QUOTE]

clt points out the posting in question:

“As for football at UNC Charlotte, that’s an issue much bigger than support for sports. It involves the entire university community. So, no, we won’t advocate an outcome on our news pages through “persuasive writing.” We’ll do what we always set out to do: report the facts as completely as we can establish them and let the community decide.”

clt just laughs at this. the o has been far from neutral in its coverage of this topic. an editor of a paper who supports NOT having a D1 football team in his market is a little myopic if you ask clt…and the majority of commenters on charlotte.com

the majority of charlotte.com readers. charlotte biz journal and charotte students support football. get with the program observer!

your populace has spoken!

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[QUOTE=NinerWupAss;326706]Ya know Mike for the most part I am ok with that answer. I just wish you would give us at least equal billing since we are actually in the reigon that you supposedly cover.[/QUOTE]

Yup thats what I said.

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The key is how many. Those teams are popular here, but Notre Dame is not more popular here than North Carolina, and you know it. The Cowboys are popular, but no more so than the Redskins (and probably less) and both are, at this point, less popular than the Panthers, as bad as they can be on occasion.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this. Because I do think there are more Notre Dame football fans in Charlotte than Tar Heel football fans. The key there being “football” fan. With many of the Wal Mart fans that we make fun of, they pull for the Tar Heels in basketball and pull for somebody else in football. I know of 3 just myself that pull for UNC-CH in basketball and ND in football.

And I’m not convinced there are more Panther fans either. What we see at BOA stadium is not necessarily an accurate gage, even though there is a huge Cowboy turnout. That’s because the Panther fans own the season tickets. If the SuperBowl was played here with the Cowboys vs the Panthers, and tickets were equally open to everybody, the turnout would be totally different.

There's also a geography limitation. It would cost us a fortune to cover Notre Dame or the Cowboys from here, and if we're not going to spend that fortune, that makes no sense. Using AP, which can easily be found online at espn.com and elsewhere, doesn't differentiate my product from them, and thus makes us less stable in an unstable industry. Similarly, other outlets can't cover the ACC like we can, or the Niners for that matter. I'm in no danger of losing subscribers or online viewers to the Gaston Gazette on Niners coverage, for instance.

I agree that it is limited to geography. And I do think you have an unbelievably difficult task of determining that. But that’s my whole issue. Determining geography and region seems very vague. But what’s not vague is that the Charlotte 49ers are in Charlotte. As far as geography, VT and USC would not be that much different than covering UNC-CH. And as far as football fans, I do believe there are more VT football fans in Charlotte than UNC-CH.

This argument is stupid. It's fairly unanimous that Jim -- and by extension the Observer -- has done a good job of covering the Niners. Correct me if I'm wrong on that. But it's just as true that it would be job-security suicide for me to do less than we do on the ACC in the paper.

Working for a company that just cut 22 newsroom jobs, I’m not sure now is the time to be experimenting with the alternative to that, either.

I won’t ask you to agree, normmm, because I know you don’t. But don’t expect me to risk my job, either.

Jim has been great. And you are definitely correct that the Observer is the best source for Niner coverage. I think the frustration now is geared towards how its covered. Like the numerous times that UNC-CH gets a photo or top story on Charlotte.com, the same day as a highly relevant Charlotte story.

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I wish there was an easy answer.
You wish what were easier? Getting all the out-of-staters who've moved to town to become tarhole fans?

Like others have said, it’s pretty obvious why the Observer is lagging in sales. All these new people in town don’t give a rat’s ass about your tarholes Mike.