Hope y’all are doing well.
My question is simple: what would have to do at The Observer to draw consistent readership from 49ers coverage.
Here for comments or questions.
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Is this a troll account?
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It was years of us feeling like y’all don’t care about us. It’s a former sports editor telling us it wasn’t the observers job to help us, even though every other D1 city based school gets hometown treatment.
Honestly I just need to see value in signing up. What is it that the O is bringing that speaks to me as a Niner. I don’t care about the NFL or the NBA and I lean to the right so the left leaning news coverage isn’t going to help either. It’s really down to Niner coverage.
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Fair points NinerWupAss. A few thoughts:
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I’m not Mike. I saw some of the discussions y’all had with him over the years, but I can tell you the analytics have never been there for Charlotte. More than anything that’s been the issue. If Charlotte was driving traffic/subscriptions, we’d cover the heck out of Charlotte. Mike would’ve then. We will now. Promise you that.
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In terms of other teams getting coverage, primarily ACC schools in the Triangle, two thoughts: When we covered those schools from Charlotte and we had a beat writer living in Raleigh, that beat paid heavy returns. When McClatchy bought our parent company, Knight-Ridder, about 15-16 years ago, we then had as a sister paper, the News & Observer of Raleigh. That position was redundant.
So we used their coverage of ACC/Triangle, they used our NASCAR/Panthers/Hornets stuff. Remains the same now (though we should’ve had a Charlotte angle when y’all played Duke basketball earlier this year).
So it’s not as though we in Charlotte say, “ACC/Triangle should get more,” we have easy access to coverage that still generates audience here for us locally. As a business that’s a win-win.
- In terms of the 49ers, I made a big push in the fall to try to beef up coverage, constant (or more constant) coverage and it still didn’t work. I would like for us to do more but I wanted to try a different approach and come to the most devoted fans to see if y’all had thoughts.
I see the passion over here and figure there’s gotta be a way we can tap into that. I know winning helps, too, and Charlotte sports teams — college and pro — haven’t done a lot of that lately.
But right now, it’s like we brought the McRib back and we’re throwing away buckets full off the warmer every night because nobody likes barbeque
sauce.
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Just an fyi, our discord board is very active. Agent 49 discord board. They could give good feedback as well.
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OK, thanks. Will check it out. Please let them know about this post here, too. Might be easier to keep it all in one place.
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See it’s lines like that. It’s chicken or egg,
I get that. We need help building an audience, you want the audience. Of course winning will help, but having gone to other G5 city based schools their papers cover their home town team so much better than we have ever gotten.
I noticed y’all picked the coverage up this last fall, but honestly that just gave off a feeling of oh now they wanna cover us.
For me I just want to see more consistency in coverage to get me on board and it’s not just athletics it’s coverage of everything going on on campus.
Something like this change to allowing conference movement and it having to be approved by the BoG needs coverage and not just coverage but the impact to Charlotte.
For the record I never complained about the ACC coverage. You have an audience there. I get it.
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Very simple, cover Charlotte sports!
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Hey 49erForever, we’ve done that and really tried in fall and results weren’t encouraging.
I’m just trying to be honest. I want to meet in the middle, really do. No shade intended. I’ve never had any kind of attitude towards Charlotte by the way. As a kid, I applied to school at Charlotte. It didn’t look like it does now way back in 1984. Place is pretty amazing now.
This fall was a real legit attempt and had audience been there, it would’ve carried over. I can probably drum up support for another push, but it just needs returns. I’ve heard over the years, “We want more coverage.”
I remember when we had beat writers dedicated to just Charlotte and, from where I sat, y’all got plenty. I used to come to games over in the gym just to watch. Ball was good. Crowd was lively. I was there when y’all sent the current St. John’s coach home very very upset. One of the best atmospheres for any sporting event I’ve been to in Charlotte actually.
But back on point: I think in fall we had more consistency. I can’t speak to coverage of non-sports things. I’m a sportswriter, but I can pass along the thoughts.
Talk to me about the BoG thing. Curious.
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THIS is the problem. The “we’ve tried” argument is so condescending coming from a publication that did everything to belittle us even when we were winning.
David Poole calling us “little ol uncc…who is Charlotte…there isn’t a school named charlotte…it’s uncc” when we were trying to rebrand and were winning.
Getting our big game writeups buried on page 3,4 or back page.
Giving us a big spread ONCE every 3yrs or so and saying “See? we’re covering you.”
That’s NOT trying. It’s condescending and placating…and it went on for 2 decades.
Guess what…when you do that for 2 decades…we don’t come running back when you give us good coverage for a few months. You know why? YOU STOPPED AFTER A FEW MONTHS.
THAT’S the point.
Cover the damn HOME team of the HOME newspaper like YOU care about it’s success MORE than other schools. Why? BECAUSE IT’S YOUR DAMN HOME SCHOOL!
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I’m a former newspaper guy myself, so I get a lot of what you’re saying. You need eyeballs to warrant putting resources into it.
Part of my issue for me is the cost. I know you have the $1 for one month to start, but it’s $16 a month after that, and that’s a lot honestly (again, coming from a newspaper guy who’s paper has a similar price point for digital). And as NWA said I’d mostly be interested in Niners coverage. I fully get that pushback against paying for news, but I fully get that it’s necessary.
I know this isn’t up to you guys but your corporate overlords, but a micro subscription, say a few dollars for just Niners coverage, would be intriguing. Agent 49’s insider site was $3.
And here’s the thing though… even he couldn’t make it worth the time. If you could get a true insider that could offer up information we can’t get anywhere else, it would be worth it. But the school is apparently making that very difficult.
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OK hear all that TRLeader,
I would push back about 49ers’ coverage historically. You all regularly got front page play and placed into what we call the “centerpiece,” the center of the front page with the big photo. That’s the most important story, from our standpoint.
I have had Niners fans argue that because UNC was in what we call “the strip,” the story across the top, it was more important. I can’t argue with how you take things, but the centerpiece, or CP, to us, is the King Daddy.
I can’t speak to Poole, rest in peace, and what was said to him or what he said back, but if you knew David, you knew he was fiery and could go zero to 100 real quick. So some of his responses I maybe take with a grain of salt.
Ultimately, it’s hard to spend heavy resources to cover things that deliver very little return. That’s not me talking down or having an attitude or anything, that’s just the truth. That goes for everything we cover and most media outlets.
I think we should cover Charlotte on the reg. I would like to see that. I believe the audience is there. I just want to find ways to get it there.
Wow! The O has done nothing but consider Charlotte sports as an afterthought for so long that there is no way you are going to get Charlotte readership back overnight. You are going to have to show more commitment and not afterthought coverage after Chapel Hill coverage. We are Charlotte and expect a Charlotte publication to cover Charlotte and not when they do on the 8th page of the edition.
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49eersForever,
We don’t cover the ACC from here very much at all. As I said earlier when we were bought out by another company, we were in the same chain with Raleigh. We started sharing coverage. ACC coverage, particularly Duke/UNC does really well.
I have not been in any meetings where folks said Charlotte was an afterthought, but I get that’s how readers feel and that’s real. As i said before, maybe I can get folks behind another push but you guys gotta meet us in the middle.
Nobody wins by holding onto the past, holding onto the edge of the pool. Trust me when i say this: if we started publishing charlotte stories that got readership and drove subscriptions, you’d get a lot more coverage.
I’ll get blasted for this, but I don’t think venting at Langston is going to accomplish much.
Langston, the honest answer is that Mike and Mark Packer did everything they could to keep us “in our place” until about 2005, then Chancellor Phil Dubois took over and buried our athletics for his entire reign. Our fanbase has been repeatedly beaten into submission and is not generally trusting.
Plus the Observer, unfortunately, like every other paper, has lost so much weight in the current media environment. I’m honestly not sure how much the younger generation cares, between us being so bad for 18 years, and with the movement to social media and Tik Tok length attention spans.
This board has a lot of old farts like you and me, and older, and you’ll probably make us happy covering us more. But to answer your question, I don’t know what it’s going to take to capture the younger generation that never attached to either the program or to newspapers / newspaper websites in the first place. They may be attaching to our sports program now, but I think most of them get their news from social media.
I guess I probably just talked you into spamming Tik Tok, Instagram, and Twitter with story leads and short videos.
Also, Hunter Bailey did a fantastic job covering us. Thanks for giving him the assignments. I did what I could to promote his pieces on Twitter and here. I know you probably stretched the budget to engage him. If we have a nice run over the rest of the season and into next season, maybe you’ll get the returns you’re looking for if you spam his stories on all those outlets. I promise I’ll continue promoting them as well, as long as the quality stays high.
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Again…here’s a challenge for you. You go and research ANY top 200 university located in a major city and see how many articles and how much coverage they get by their local paper.
If we are not dead last…and by a large margin…I’ll shut up and never complain again.
I get your dollars and cents argument until I compare it to other schools and other papers. We are literally IGNORED by our local paper. IGNORED. Other papers find some way and some how to support the local school. You guys do not.
My problem is why is your paper the only one that can’t find the dollars and cents to make it work??
And again…to make it work…it’s gonna take YEARS of a flood of coverage to win back the fans you pissed off for 20 years. There are a vast majority of Niner fans that will NEVER read an Observer article no matter what you promise or provide…because of the scorn of the last 20 years.
YOU dug the hole…YOU need to work hard to fix it. We ain’t just coming back for empty promises. And even if you do win us back…it will take years of effort…not one Fall.
The only person ever at the Observer that felt like they genuinely wanted to cover us and was in our corner was Stan Olsen. But he was the only one.
Don’t want a pity “push” to placate us…I want REAL coverage and dedication. And there is no meet in the middle. We are the ones YOU pissed off for 20 years…YOU need to come way farther than the middle to win US back.
We’ve done just fine avoiding the Observer for 20 years…we are used to it by now.
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I’d like to see another spot dedicated to niner sports like utter used to do. I get the part about needing clicks to support more coverage, but we need consistent coverage for the city and region to start recognizing us more….which would in turn increase eyeballs in the future.
Persinger was a prick when I used to ask for more coverage. I do appreciate the effort, but it is going to take some consistent coverage to get some of us back. Give me a niner blurb one day a week at least. With agent49 backing off, you could really drive some engagement with a true insider getting some info. I still have an online sub by the way.
Of course winning makes it a lot easier to cover us as well.