Newspaper Coverage, League Bowling

[Frank Goebel]

Okay, here goes...

Newspapers across the country vary in how they present bowling on the local level, and that can include (or not include) national or regional pro events, elite or scratch tournaments in the greater area, a travelling association league, scratch or "classic"/"semi-classic" leagues, high-money handicap leagues, organizational leagues, mixed or men's/women's leagues of various abilities, senior leagues, junior travel leagues, in-house junior programs, collegiate bowling, interscholastic high school matches. (That's exhaustive, but not intended to be all-inclusive.)

So, here's a chance to weigh in on how the sport of bowling is treated in the local paper. I don't expect major metropolitan dailies (NY Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, to name a few) to mention much more than the highest national pro events. But a paper that's local to you might be a place where you might want to turn to see local league bowling scores. Are there feature articles that run once or more a week?

What happens in your local area? Are there more than one paper serving the larger area to you, how do they stack up?

This is not meant to be a forum to "bash" a local paper, just to mention what's typically featured in its sports section regarding bowling. You need not mention a paper by name, though mentioning your municipality might "spill the beans". Do mention, though, if it's a daily or weekly publication.

[Angel Zobel-Rodriguez]

Speaking from the San Fernando Valley, there is NO bowling coverage in "normal" papers. We're lucky if they cover the Orange County tournament at Fountain Bowl each year by the LA Times. The only coverage the Daily News puts in is perhaps Rock and Bowl (what a new cool concept!) or some odd story that is 5-10 years old to the rest of the bowling community.

What peeves me more is the local "bowling" paper has a pay to play practice. Of course, someone who understands business I can comprehend that centers, leagues and tournaments that have contracts (weekly column space or ad space and articles of winners) should get first priority, but up until a few years ago, anyone could send in information on a "space available" basis. That stopped several years ago. Now if you want to run a Polaroid of a 300 award, you pay $5. An article on anything, and they charge. Yet they run the same God-awful press releases we see all week on the Internet and obviously don't charge the PBA or USBC for their press releases.

The sad part is more and more centers are refusing to "advertise" with the paper and soon will lose its relevance. With more associations able to get the information out via association websites, they will have little need for pay to play in the future.

[Frank Goebel]

There are three major papers serving the greater "market" in which I bowl, one per county, though there is an overlap somewhat.

The western one does the nicest job putting in league bowling. Each of the "major" leagues gets a full listing complete with team standings and league-wide scores by team. There's a weekly column, featuring mostly tournament coverage. I don't know what its coverage is of the junior travel league, which covers more than the three counties. Other league bowling does at least get a listing of top bowlers.

The eastern one is the smallest, runs like a tabloid. League scores are stuck in sports whenver there's room (low priority) but it has a two-page spread on Tuesdays, with a column describing tournaments in the area, then some highlights. The junior travel league has its own section; used to be a week behind (bowl on Sunday the 1st, it wouldn't appear until Tuesday the 10th) but I think it's current now. They also do a "bowler of the week" (no, I haven't been featured), often has to be one of the top bowlers in the area. It's also had other items; one time I was lucky enough to have that paper's columnist present when one of my former students, by then a teammate, and I both had 279s in the same game. Our last names appeared in the headline of "nearly perfect" as we both went through at least the 7th frame. I can e-mail him anything for possible inclusion.

The county in the middle, the state capital, treats bowling at the very bottom, although it does feature it "when it has to". This market was the birth of the PBA, you think it would have better coverage. I don't know if there's a weekly column any more; yesterday's paper's sports had 60% on Major League playoffs, 15% on football (combined NFL and college), perhaps 20% on high school fall sports, 4% on other adult sports like golf, and 1% on bowling. And here's how bowling went in: a block "Local notes" had the headline about how the local university dropped out of the top 25 for football (Division I-AA). Then a sub-headline came in for "Junior Pro-Scoring Bowling" (the travel league) which took up about 2/3 of that whole article. On a regular basis, they do list bowling when there's room, though my center is rarely even included (even if submitted)...I think a snub exists to some extent. To their defense though, once the World Series is over (or underway), the City League (adult travel) will start, and will get weekly coverage. On the same page will be a week's worth of classic league scores, with standings and top bowlers.

Tuesday's the bowling "day" for the two papers to the east; I don't know what the schedule is for the western one.

[Keith Chambers]

In the interest of not slamming the local newspapers, not a single paper in the San Diego County area prints any bowling news! At best we will get a few of the top scores from the PBA results. It is obviously just "filler" and gets only as much space as they have left over after printing all of the local golf scores.
Angel and I are probably served by the same bowling newspaper (or not served) as we also have to pay to have items printed. The local association has to pay to be listed and to have high scores or other news printed. We no longer have a "local" bowling newspaper as the publisher went out of business.
Bowling websites and bowling center websites are becoming the way to post news items of interest and bowling information.

[JoleenNorth]

I bowl in Ishpeming, Michigan. The Mining Journal in Marquette, Michigan does a good job of covering bowling stories, and also posts all high scores weekly as long as the secretaries send them in to the newspaper. It's easy to go to their virtual newsroom on the web and send in our scores. It also helps that one of their staff writers, formerly a sports reporter, is also an avid bowler!

[Vickie Alltizer]

In recent years the local newspaper has increased the space alloted to the weekly bowling column in the Sunday paper. The writer is a local bowler, secretary of a league, and assistant manager of one of our bowling centers who has been around the area and involved in bowling for several years. She has developed game/series/pins over criteria for adults, seniors, and youth (male and female in each category) and provided them to each league secretary. We've used one of the available tabs in option D6 to create a report to provide weekly score info. About a year ago she started including thumbnail pictures of Honor Score bowlers to go with the article she has written (that's why my digital goes with me every week). In addition to the article and pics, there is a columnar report of actual bowlers score separated by men, women, and youth for game and series. Her articles will also include heads-up info about upcoming local tournaments (or results of), news from the Association, and anything pertaining to the local bowlers that she has been made aware of. Typically the article portion is half a page and maybe more if it been a busy week, but every now and then after she submits that article to the paper they will cut/or rewrite a portion because of space limitations. All in all, for a small town local paper it's very good coverage.