Another option is to reach out to the Athletic Department. More attendance is needed at games. The Niners buy ads while, the observer cover the Niners. I am sure overtime this would be a win/win for both.
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Langston - I will give you credit for coming on here to even ask and even more for replying to several of these posts so far. As you can tell, there is a lot of vitriol here related to the O and Mike P. Etc.
As a fan since ‘98, there are so many times where we were not covered sufficiently, that it would take a LOT to convince me that the O cares about our school, it’s contributions to the community and it’s students & fans so you have an uphill battle with many of us. With that being said, there are 30k students on campus plus 100k+ alumni in the region so the market is worth trying to tap into.
For me, I get my news through Apple+ and do follow the observer feed, but frankly find it hard to find Charlotte 49ers stories there. I would see Hunters tweets, realize it was paywalled and try to find it on my feed and couldn’t’ do that easily so my clicks were inconsistent. I regularly read Axios and find their style of story to be easy to read so I use them for other local news & updates. You guys had a similar take (five something) that was just never as good.
As for how to get more Charlotte 49er fans to read, I think you will need to play the long game and give us something unique. A dedicated beat writer, multiple stories pre & post game, insights in to recruiting, player bios, opponent previews, feature stories on coaches combined with broader coverage of the academic success & growth to begin to scratch the surface. You would also need to consider a multi-media approach with stories, pictures, video & audio for the full circle approach.
For example, right now, our basketball team is delivering on the court and I can 1000% say I have not considered even looking for coverage from your team. If you were doing it right, there would have been two stories Tuesday (game preview + one feature/player in review) and then two stories Wednesday (game recap w/pics + some sort of analysis/broader story on the recent success).
I think micro-subscription is the only route and if there was a dedicated newsletter and maybe even podcast that accompanied regular, in-depth quality stories, I would consider paying for that. Oh and if you ever launch something like this, please don’t let the dummies in accounting or corporate price it at anything other than $x.49 ok?
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JFC. This topic begins with a question about what it would take for us to pay attention to the O and the first reply states that “the analytics aren’t there.” I stopped reading then and there. Why ask the question if you don’t care about the answer?
So, it’s not good business to cover us, but he’d like to know what would pique our interest? Makes no sense at all.
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clt recommends the observer start covering the cowboys, yankees and lakers. also taylor swift
that will get more clicks
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Some options. Cover things that matter to the community more than just the game scores and the action. Mike Hill and team had to put together a podcast and post on their website to give updates on the AD. Those things take time and money to put together. I am sure the AD would love to write something up and let the O publish and distribute it for them.
Talk about recruiting, recruits, and players? Exposure for the players would go a long way to feed the many egos out there. It would also show more about who they are as a person. Covering recruiting let’s the local market understand that Charlotte is bringing in high quality players.
Talk about the Conference we play in and that Army and Navy will be coming to Charlotte along with other big name schools. There is a list of out of conference football games in this forum with big name programs.
Talk about stadium and other sports complex changes coming up. How we need more funding from the community to grow Charlotte into a top tier D1 University. Interview local community leaders and get their thoughts on Charlotte being the “City’s University.”
So many things out there for opportunity.
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Thanks for this Langston. You won’t get the hate and vitriol from me. I will answer your question.
For years I got my “sports news” from Twitter. However with the unappealing changes going on over there the last couple years I am trying to get my sports news elsewhere. I have been a subscriber to The Athletic for a couple years and subscribed to the Observer this year. I DO want to support local news generated by real people, local people. I think it is a real shame what is happening to local new - paper and digitally. No one wants to PAY for people to do the work anymore and it is only going to get worse with this AI crap.
My observations from the Observer this year. The coverage has been better especially with Football. Hunter and Alex (I think) have done a good job with the articles they have done. There still has not been consistent coverage, but the big games and events have been covered.
What I would like to see: (Consider the picture below)
When you go on the site - there is a Charlotte 49ers tab! Awesome I thought when I first subscribed! This will be a portal for ALL THINGS Niners. If there is anything Niner related I can go here and find it. But that has not been the case. There have been articles written that never show up here. In your defense, there has been way more than 2 basketball articles written since football - but you cannot tell that by going to the Niner Portal page.
What I want to see here? Consider the portal page for UNC on The Athletic:
I go to Charlotte’s version of this page on The Athletic daily. I did not use their page for this discussion because they too do not have a beat writer so there is no new news… the last is about Ron leaving). But this page it what I want to see in the Niner Portal on the Observer.
Immediately I can see:
- The record and place in the standings
- Latest news in order
- Schedule including last game and next 3
- top 10 in the standings
- leading scorers
- links to stats and roster, etc
Most of these things can be automated so no beat writer is necessary. This is how they have this page for every team in the country regardless if there is news or not.
How do you bring in subscribers? How about sponsoring a home game and hand out a free 49 day subscription to everyone in attendance. I guarantee everyone would try it and many would renew if the coverage is there. The is how The Athletic drew me in - with a $1 a month sub. Now I am paying… I don’t even know? $9 a month?
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Maybe this page needs updating? But it seems to counter what you just said. Why isn’t there a “Charlotte Sports” dedicated staff? Or heck even NC Sports? Why one person for ACC if it isn’t something you cover?
I’m not a hockey fan so I am biased… but seems to me really GREAT coverage of the Niners, Davidson, App, Queens, etc may be better than a dedicated NHL person. You can get Hurricane coverage from a AP from Raleigh area I assume?
I am 39 years old and I grew up in Charlotte. I was a Hornets, Panthers, and Braves fan. I, like many children whose parents did not go to college, also pulled for the Tar Heels. As a huge Braves fan, I got in the habit of reading the sports section nearly daily. I always knew about what was going on with Duke and UNC. Sometimes I knew what was going on about UNCC. My honest-to-God impression from the time I was in sixth grade was something along the lines of “Duke and UNC are important, and oh, here in Charlotte, we have this also-ran, that we sometimes cover as well called UNCC.”
When I visited campus in 2000 I was pretty blown away by Halton Arena. My local paper had for years written from the slant that UNCC - now Charlotte - was a small potatoes entity playing less important games. An entire tier below UNC and Duke and the mighty ACC. I had never watched a Charlotte game and wasn’t a huge college basketball fan at the time, but I was stunned. I was stunned by campus, by the arena, by UNC Charlotte in general. I was only considering locally, Charlotte and NC State at the time (intending to be an engineer), and as someone who grew up in Charlotte, my impression of the University was that it was more like a collection of the dingy old building at CPCC at the time, not a growing, vibrant University with a then population of about 19,000 students.
Admitted to every university I applied for, I took a leap and chose Charlotte. Partially because growing up here, I was always of a ‘Charlotte first’ mentality for the city, and partially because I was so blown away with the school from my visit. Perhaps I was so blown away because of the local and regional perception and the way the university was frequently portrayed.
I started at Charlotte in 2002, and immediately fell in love with Niners basketball, Halton Arena, the University as a whole, and, like a good evangelical, began trying to spread the word. It was of course difficult because even the general perception was that Charlotte was lesser than, having been reiterated and reinforced for years.
We had some really fun years during that run, and I will admit, during the 2004-05 season, the coverage in the Observer really picked up. I actually read the paper daily from 2004-2006 because I worked at a hotel in addition to attending college, and we got the paper, so I read the sports section every single day, this time, less focused on professional sports, and laser-focused on college basketball.
Even then, when we were getting better coverage, the angle very much felt as though what we were doing at Charlotte wasn’t as important as what was happening in RTP. I won’t claim to have a sharp enough memory to articulate exactly our coverage compared to the triangle schools for the entire season, but I never felt like we were equal, we were always - even if only slightly - second-tier citizens in our own city.
I read the Observer for many years - more than just sports, as an overall publication. The quality of the articles has declined. Sometimes the editing is quite laughable. As someone who reviews and edits technical documents for a living, I can’t help but laugh sometimes at the things that make it out of the editing room at the Observer. The staunch political slant that the paper has, all but abandoning moderates in favor of a strong agenda promoted by those on the editorial board made it easy to stop reading the paper over the last ten years.
When I have checked in for any article on Charlotte, I’m usually disappointed. Our own woes over the past 15-20 years - which could be detailed in its own novella - certainly have made it easier for the paper to ignore us. The Observer’s prophecy came true - Charlotte is lesser than, and not worthy of our esteemed readers’ time and attention. Our administration did the students, alumni, and the program overall no favors to rebut that proposition, and there was not much to read about. Even some of the most ardent supporters stepped away from Halton Arena - as the numbers clearly bear out - and the program overall.
While there was some initial excitement with Healy, things have been on a downward trajectory for a while for the program. When Poggi was hired, there was palpable excitement. Charlotte hired a no-nonsense, independently wealthy guy who was getting national media coverage. There were near-limitless storylines - see Mining for Gold. The Observer’s coverage did pick up some have included some interest pieces as well.
Unfortunately, the uptick in coverage that you’ve referred to several times in your posts came at a challenging time. The historical sentiment that the Observer treats us as lesser than at best, or outright discriminates against the program at worst, was still very much alive and well. Couple that with the fact that now if I wanted to read this coverage, I had to pay for it. While the uptick in coverage may have been encouraging, getting over the mental hump of decades of being essentially told to ‘know our place’ was not going to come easy. We also did ourselves no favors with the product on the field, and even all of the excitement surrounding Poggi fizzled out some as the season progressed and it became apparent we were not going to have the storybook year that some had hoped for.
Then basketball season came and the coverage dried up. I went and looked for an article after the UAB game, and there was none.
As I headed over to the Charlotte Observer’s Sports landing page this morning - expecting to find at least a single Niners article to undercut my point - I found none.
Two days ago the Niners had a super-exiting, come from 20 points behind, game at home in front of a rowdy crowd of Charlotteans - and potential subscribers - and there isn’t a single mention of it amongst the twenty-nine (29!) article links on the sports landing page. This includes a variety of articles about the upcoming ACC football season and a highschool team. Yet you come here and have the audacity to ask us why Niners fans won’t give you sixteen dollars a month.
Look deeper onto our Charlotte 49ers page, and the last mention is our five-game win streak. From before the UAB game. We are in first place is a very quality conference, with TV games scheduled on national TV outlets coming up soon, and no mention. Before the article after the UNT win, the last article was Duke, and before that Davidson - shared interest pieces that weren’t really dedicated Niners coverage. There is nothing else on basketball or what is shaping up to be a special season with all kinds of story-lines including our departed coach, incoming Aussie interim who’s doing amazing things, our cobbled-together rosters vaulting to the top of the American after losing our best two players. There’s more than enough out there, but the paper has made a deliberate decision to ignore it.
People have mentioned chicken and egg. We’ve gone through the contentious history between the paper and the fanbase. The problem is, even now, the representative of the paper who is coming to engage with us is coming from a place of entitlement. “We did a few articles on you guys during football season and you didn’t rush to us in droves and dump money in our pockets.”
Your industry is a dying one, and you charge for a digital subscription what a paper at your door cost when I was a kid. You are competing with Netflix, but you are also competing with a swath of completely free online content from places like X, conference websites, and any other enter/infotainment sources. And again, for our eyeballs in particular, we’ve been trained to go elsewhere.
So what do we do about this? Here is my challenge to you. Create a subscribers’ special for a reasonable promotional price for the year, with a commitment to cover Niners sports fairly and give us adequate coverage. Coverage after each game, special interest pieces. When there are articles about us, discuss the team and program as something worthwhile, something deserving of the attention of the paper, the reader, and the support of the Charlotte community at large.
Let’s give each other a trial run. You offer me a deal where I can count on Niners coverage that’s from the perspective of support, you promise to provide sufficient coverage of the program, and I promise to put much-needed dollars into the pockets of a dying business. Collaborate with the AD, run a Niner-specific promo to show your commitment, lay out the coverage you promise to provide, and maybe even a public statement that the Observer wants to mend the relationship.
There are thousands of alumni of means who would pay for an Observer subscription for Niners coverage, but you have to make it worth our while. So I turn this back on you, I challenge you. Commit to covering the Niners. Set up a special outreach program to Niner Nation, where we in return will commit a discounted sum, and let’s see if we can uphold the promises to each other. I’ll commit right now to pay $4.90 a month in a trial period if you’ll commit to treating the Niners like the hometown team they deserve to be treated like. If you provide fair, consistent coverage, the fans will remain paying customers when that price reverts to the normal rate.
If you read all this and your takeaway is “it doesn’t work like that” or that we need to commit the Observer first, then you’ve wasted your time even coming here. I’d like to see nothing more than fair, consistent, supportive coverage of our program in our local paper, but if you need our money to do that, it needs to be a two-way street.
I wish you the absolute best of luck in your endeavor, as long as it genuinely includes fair and consistent coverage of the Niners.
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Since I am on a screen shot roll today - how about making going to see the daily edition online not so obnoxious? I understand you need to advertise. I get it. You guys are bleeding cash. But as a paying subscriber - this ad plus the header taking up 75% of the “front page” is just obnoxious and does not make me want to stay.
So wait, y’all are telling me that the Observer is still in business?
Thanks for coming on here and asking the question @LangstonW
It’s sad we are where we are. These are two institutions that could have helped prop each other up over the years.
I do think if the only justification for doing more coverage is the analytics around short term gains, the discussion is probably over. The water isn’t under the bridge, it is at flood stage.
This is a relationship that should have never been in question to begin with. For whatever reason the school has never been covered by the observer or embraced by Charlotte as a whole when compared to the contributions it and its alumni make as part of the greater Charlotte community. We should all be in this together. The university makes Charlotte a better place to be and I would love for the community to reciprocate. Coverage in the O could be a large part of that.
I appreciate the effort in asking, but this needs to be a long term relationship. Everyone on here is pretty much committed to the University, idiots, or both. The Observer should have been and needs to be.
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Ditto for me… started my subscription in 1985 from Holshouser Hall and was loyal for 35 years while living in CLT. Even drove 10 miles round trip to purchase from a convenience store when I moved to GSO.
My ONLY reason was to follow Niner sports. The world has changed and newspapers don’t have a monopoly on info the way they used to.
I could be convinced to come back but it wasn’t me who ended the relationship. However I do appreciate your efforts because the 90,000 Charlotte alums living here offer great potential for any business.
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I agree with Ninermac that this ship might have sailed long ago.
Niner fans looked for Niner sports coverage and couldn’t easily find it. Instead, Niner fans found other ways to get that info, like this very website. We get more useful information from a quarterly article in the Charlotte Business Journal on things happening at our University than we ever have from the O.
Truth is, up until recently it’s been apparent that covering the Niners or the U in general wasn’t a priority at the Observer. I dare say, seemed like it was the punishment assignment for beat writers based on our interactions with David Scott.
A perfect example of where the O failed the University and the community was the whole fiasco over the lack of a medical school.
No one questioned Dubois on his claims about “now not being the right time” and not a month later Wake Forest swoops in to start a medical school. No one went back to Dubois to challenge him on that.
I think the Observer has the maximum audience it’s every going to get right now, and that audience is in decline with every new entry in the Obituary page.
I would consider a sports page only online subscription if I knew it was less that $5 and that I would get consistent, year-round coverage of Niner sports.
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Langston,
I was going to post something VERY similar to dlb. My comments would have been the EXACT same, only I had an Observer subscription since the 1980s. I finally canceled in ~2014-2015 due mostly to the lack of Niner coverage and the liberal slant in 90% of the non-sports sections.
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- yes
- hell no, they can f off
- maybe if lutz is editor
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voters
clt asks if you would pay for the observer if they increased 49er coverage
I think I would sign up and forget about it for $1 per month and let it just keep charging my card. Kind of like a gym membership you don’t use. Until local news and espn starts charging I don’t see a reason to pay for the Charlotte observer. It’s too bad advertisements can’t pay the bills.
How much would you pay monthly for a Charlotte Observer subscription?
- $1
- $2.99
- $4.99
- $7.99
- $15.99
- I wouldn’t pay. It’s free or nothing for me.
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voters
Thought about this overnight and the best I can come up with is: If you have beat your wife/girlfriend constantly for 40 years and all of a sudden you tell her one day that you have changed and will not do it again, who in their right mind would believe you.
Since the day The Charlotte News shut down and quit delivering the evening paper, our university, Charlotte, has not received nothing but very token coverage by the O. So, who in their right mind would believe you. It is going to take time for the O to gain the trust you expect. I am sure you have heard of burning the bridge after you crossed it.
Didn’t read the entire thread so if I’m being redundant apologies.
My .02 cents. Frankly, I don’t blame the O for not covering us much the last bunch of years. Honestly Thank God you didn’t. But I think I saw you post that you applied to Charlotte in 1984, makes you old like me, lol.
I’ve been supporting us for years and there was a time that we deserved to be supported by local media, plenty of times. Sorensen sometimes gave us the occasional shout but most of the time he kinda dissed us. Don’t know why but I always liked him for some reason.
Poole, RIP, was ALWAYS an ass about Charlotte sports.
As for Persinger, he was a condescending jerkoff that did his level best to keep us in “our place”. He would actually come on this board and do his best to belittle the program. Actually went as far as to threaten to sue some of the young guys on here until the old farts told him to go fuck himself and bring it.
All that said, I get that they’re trying to generate income, if we don’t move the needle now then we don’t. But there was a time when we were criminally ignored. Hell, Dickie V did one of our games with Cincy if I remember correctly.
Once again, just one man’s opinion
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Thanks Ninercentral for taking the time and saving me the time to say exactly what you said. However I’m much older than you and graduated in’73. I’ve been an observer paper subscriber since I was in high school and unbelievably I still am. I pay $418.14 for thirteen weeks of this paper now and that makes no difference because the observer needs clicks to count. So my NINER fandom can’t be accounted for just by my paying this exorbitant amount for a CHARLOTTE publication that refuses to cover the topic I am most interested in. Pretty pathetic in all respects.
But thanks Langston for checking in with us. I appreciate your good faith effort. Hope THE CHARLOTTE athletics programs actually get something from your outreach.
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